


Love So Sterng I: Pound Puppy Eyes

by mab



Series: Love So Sterng [1]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Blood, Charlie Kelly's bad mental health, Dissociation, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Child Neglect, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Prescription drug misuse, Self-Harm, Uncle Jack - Freeform, Vomit, Whump, deep down, drinking on painkillers is dumb kids, eventual charmac, luther mcdonald's A+ parenting, the gang love eacher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 20:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 41,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mab/pseuds/mab
Summary: One of Frank’s bad choices has dire repercussions for two members of The Gang. Can they (and their friendship) survive the aftermath?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The is the first in a series that will eventually be CharMac. This fic doesn't include any actual Charlie/Mac, but future installments will.
> 
> Series title comes from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The 7 Secrets of Awakening the Highly Effective Four-Hour Giant, Today. Charlie writes part of a section, writing: "Charlie so gud love so sterng love so much love sumtime." 
> 
> Please heed the tags that are warnings up there! I tried to include everything that could be triggering, but as someone who has a rubber band phobia, I know it's hard to predict what someone else can find triggering. If you read this and think of a tag I should have added, please don't hesitate to tell me. I will add it to the list.
> 
> Finally, a big thank you to my beta, Laura, aka brownwithafrown. She's amazing and has helped me with this fic immensely. She's also quickly become one of my favorite online pals. She is very kind to her americuntie Mab.

Mac doesn't register what he's hearing, at first. He's down in the basement, rearranging  the extra boxes of booze. Charlie complained he piled them too high. There was a step stool right there, for that very reason, but Charlie said he didn't like climbing on things, (not if he wasn't blitzed out of his head on inhalants and climbing a leaning tower of boxes to freedom via an air vent, apparently). And when Dee went down to get rum, she just squawked that the boxes were too heavy and that she was dizzy from basement fumes. Dumb bitch. So now Mac is pulling down the boxes, taking out four bottles per box so that there's only eight rather than twelve inside and stacking them so they're chest height, no higher.

 

It's not his fault that he didn't know his own strength anymore (not that anyone gives a shit how hard he worked to look good and keep them safe with his hot new rockin' bod) and so he made the boxes too heavy. He hated doing inventory anyway because of this. Everyone had an opinion, but no one did the work (not that he didn't try to slide out of it himself). Also, it's not his fault that he couldn't find any more boxes. So now there's a lot of liquor bottles all around him on the floor. Brown liquor, clear liquor, whatever the hell Jägermeister  is… And Mac may be debating snagging a few bottles for his and Dennis's place. It's not really stealing, if he's taking something he'd just drink in the bar without paying, right?

 

He has to admit, it's a decent workout, lifting boxes and moving things around, which is why he put on his workout mix a little while ago. The music tells his body to go more faster. So his ear buds are in, not even at maximum volume, but it still takes a while for him to realize that there is an awful lot of stomping and crashing going on upstairs for a bar that is closed. Charlie is up there cleaning while Mac moves the stock around. They closed early, it was only eleven on a Tuesday, but Dee was out on a 'date' (yeah, right) and Charlie was bummed because he hadn't seen Frank in days, and Mac was bummed because Dennis was in North Dakota again, visiting D/BJ ('don't call him Dennis-slash-Brian Junior' Dennis had shouted at him, but Mac thought the nickname was great and wanted to keep it  - at least until the rest of the gang heard it - they had rules about this, banning of nicknames was not allowed without the nicknamer and nicknamed present, as well as at least one other member of the gang). So they decided to have a movie night to keep Charlie's spirits up. Which was why he is thinking about what liquor to snag – whiskey was winning out because Charlie tended to get sad as shit when he drank vodka straight and if Mac was honest with himself, Jägermeister made him kind of violent (the last time he had drank nothing but Jäger and Redbull, he put his hand through the mirror in the apartment's bathroom)  when he accidentally sets a box on the earbuds cord and doesn't realize until the earbud is ripped out of his right ear as he turns to grab the next box. 

 

Just in time to hear a loud thud and Charlie scream. Mac's guts turn to ice. Because he knows each and every one of Charlie's screams, from frustrated to happy, sad to hungry, stoned to confessing love, (Charlie screams a lot) and that one was a rare one. That was the sound of pain. Charlie says something, Mac can just pick up on the highest sounds through the floor, and then there's another, softer thud than the one before.

 

Silence. Something is not right. Mac knows it in his bones. He runs for the stairs, he can't leave Charlie of all people alone up there with a threat, Charlie wasn't good in situations like this, didn't know how to ever just shut up and follow instructions, listening to the robber's words rather than getting distracted by like the light reflecting in a puddle or whatever else caught his eye – Mac once watched Charlie stare at the point of a mugger's knife for, like, three whole minutes before getting his wallet out while Mac and the crackhead _both_ screamed at him to fork over his cash. Which was only two dollars, in nickels, for some odd reason. Charlie was lucky Mac was with him and he didn't get knifed then, 'cause Mac was more smart and took Charlie's arm and ran as the mugger stared at his fistful of silvery metal and got this frustrated ‘I'm gonna stab you anyway’ look on his face.

 

And. Yeah. No one is supposed to hurt Charlie. Not when Mac is around. He had made that promise to himself, and out loud to Charlie when they were like eight and Charlie had crawled through his bedroom window (scaring the shit out of Mac, who didn't know Charlie could climb up the side of his house like Spiderman!), sobbing and refusing to say why. Eight year old Mac was Ronnie then, and he held on to his friend and promised that he'd protect him, which just made Charlie cry harder. Mac had never forgotten that promise, and in school he caught more than one beating that was meant for the other man (and okay, sometimes Charlie got his ass kicked on Mac's behalf, but those weren't Mac's fault!), but Mac had made a promise to his oldest friend that day nearly forty years ago. He isn't going to break that now!

 

Charlie's rat bashing stick is leaning against the wall by the basement door. Without any other weapon, Mac decides it is better than nothing. Part of him is tempted to hide down in the basement and not come out. If it was anyone else up there alone, maybe he'd do that. But there's another thud, and now he can hear through the basement door the other guy's deep voice - fuck he's probably big - and Charlie's higher one shouting something, but he can't figure out what the fuck either of them are saying.

 

Charlie shouts again in pain, and that gets Mac moving again. It's Charlie. He can't leave him. Even if Mac is so scared his guts are frozen ice, he knows he has to see what's going on. He edges into the keg room, glad the door is open into the bar and he can sneak over to the doorway. What he sees makes him want to turn tail and hide, but also go over and beat the man's brains in with his bare fists.

 

Charlie is curled up fetal on the floor, on arm around his middle and the other up over his head, and Mac is pretty sure there's blood on Charlie's face, but he can't really see at the angle he's at. The dude, who is about Mac's height but looks much less beefy, has got a gun pointed at Charlie, and that's scarier than if Arnold himself was in the room. Mac’s heart is thudding so hard in his throat that he's afraid they both will hear  and it’ll give him away, but they don't. The man just boots Charlie in the face, twice in rapid succession, boom boom without giving Charlie a chance to recover or even get his hands up to protect himself and says calmly: "I know you know where Frank is," while Charlie groans in pain, blood leaking between his fingers as he cups his hand to his smashed and bleeding nose.

 

"I don't!" Charlie answers. His voice is muffled by the hand he's got to his face, but it makes something twist in Mac's chest to hear Charlie sounding desperate and clogged with blood.

 

The man growls, actually growls, and Charlie tries to shrink away, but he's got a dazed look on his face like he's not all there anymore and Mac can't blame him. Being kicked in the face is disorientating. The man reaches down and wraps his free hand in Charlie's hair and pulls up - Charlie cries out and has to grip the man's arm to keep from losing hair. The man shakes his fist and jerks Charlie's head around (wow, Mac's never seen an adult do that to another adult, though his father was fond of doing that to him when he was being a little bitch that didn't listen good). The man lets go of his hair and looks at the sleeve of the gray blazer he's wearing, marked by the blood that was on Charlie's hand. 

 

Charlie's eyes go wide and he starts to raise his hands up, but the stranger is quicker. Mac watches it happen in what feels like slow-motion, helpless to stop it, the man swinging the gun in his hand in a wide, punishing arch that ends with a crack against Charlie's left cheekbone and Charlie starts to fall to the side, but the man grabs Charlie's shirt collar in his fist to keep him upright and hits Charlie in the face with the gun twice more so quick he doesn't get a chance to brace himself between blows. The bastard isn't giving Mac a chance to step in, he's got the gun too close to Charlie for Mac to try and stop him - he can't take the risk that the man will shoot Charlie before he will get to them.

 

Seeing the man just whale on Charlie makes Mac angry, his hand tightens on the Rat Stick as he watches. He prays as he does because he can't _do fucking anything else_ , just watch as the man lets go of Charlie's shirt and Charlie fucking crumples to the ground with a moan of pain. Mac fucking prays more in those moments than he has in the last year, begging God or Jesus or like, Saint Jude (the patron saint of lost causes and therefore pretty much the one that probably gives a shit about guys like Mac and Charlie) to step in and not let Charlie get shot. Mac isn't sure what he'd do if Charlie died.

 

Charlie doesn't get shot. Instead, he fucking _writhes_ on the floor, banging his right fist into the ground, hard, muttering 'fuck, fuck, fuck!' under his breath. Like that can distract from the pain that his face must be in. Mac hates himself for just watching, but he knows, he _knows_ he only has one chance to surprise the bastard with the gun and get Charlie (and him) out of this alive.

 

The bastard points the gun at Charlie. "Tell me where Frank is and I won't shoot you in your fucking face."

 

"I don't know where he is," Charlie says, his voice is still desperate, that sad desperate of someone who knows that they won't be believed, even though he's telling the truth.

 

The asshole growls again, and steps towards Charlie, the gun pointed at the floor as he raises his foot to kick Charlie again. And Mac decides that's it. Here's his chance. He needs to step in now, while the gun is pointed at the floor rather than Charlie. Mac finds that despite how much he hates seeing Charlie hurt, how much he hates this guy for hurting Charlie, a large part of him wants to be a coward and hang back, rush for the safety of the basement and hide there. But he can't do that. Can't leave Charlie to get beat up more, or worse.

 

Mac raises the bat and runs at the bastard. The guy turns to him just as Mac swings the bat. The spiked bat makes solid contact with the prick's head, Mac feels the shock of it connecting go down his arms (it's like driving a speeding car into a brick wall) and then Mac is sitting on his ass, having fallen for a reason he can't quite figure out for a long, dazed moment.

 

The guy hits the ground, the bat sticking to him, a spike shoved into his right eye, another driven in to his cheek. Mac stares at him, because the guy isn't moving, not even to breathe, and Mac still isn't sure why he's sitting down, except that he _can't breathe_ and something catches his eye, he looks away from the not moving man and looks down at himself, because the something that caught his eye was blood, bright red and on his chest and it's his blood, and...and....there was a bang of the gun going off, wasn't there?


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh," Mac says, breathless and sounding confused as he looks at the blood on his chest. Charlie is still curled on the ground, blinking blood out of his eyes, staring horrified at Mac. 

 

Mac is bleeding. He's got a rapidly spreading circle of red on one side of his chest and he's bleeding and he's been _shot_ and all he can say is 'oh'!?

 

"Mac," Charlie croaks out, his head is still spinning, he thinks getting pistol whipped and kicked in the face and stuff will do that to you, but he was also kind of drunk before this dude came in, fucking shouting about Frank and now, holy shit that dude was way dead, Charlie's Rat Stick in his fucking face, and Mac is _shot_!

 

Getting up seems like too bad an idea, with the spinning head and the panic and all. He just rolls to his knees and crawls to Mac, blood dripping from his definitely broken nose and maybe other parts of his face? he's not sure,  on to the floor — Charlie is going to be cleaning up forever — and he can't use both hands to crawl because the prick with a gun that's now so so so dead stomped on his fucking arm and it hurts enough that Charlie thinks it's broken too, which sucks, and it takes him way too long to shuffle over to Mac because when he finally gets there, Mac is full out gasping and leaning back, laying flat on the ground and Charlie isn't sure if that's to breathe better or because he can't sit up anymore and Charlie's been scared this whole time, since the prick kicked in the door and now, oh god, Mac was _shot_ and bleeding everywhere and maybe Mac saved his life, too? It is a lot to take in and think about, too much crowding his head, making his hands buzz.

 

"Mac?" Charlie says it again, hands trembling as he puts them on Mac's face, turning Mac's blinking face to him. Mac looks shocked. It must hurt, being shot, Charlie's never been shot, but Mac looks worse now than he did after driving into a brick wall.

 

"Charlie? He shot me?" Mac asks it like a question, surprised sounding and there are such long pauses between the words that Charlie isn't sure Mac is getting any air at all and Mac can't hold his breath like Charlie can. It has to be bad.

 

"Yeah, bro. He did," Charlie says, because it seems like the thing to do, even though it's kind of obvious what happened. He can forgive Mac for being a little slow. Charlie feels like everything is slow and heavy himself, his face is one giant throb of pain and heat, but his panic for Mac's _life_ means he can't think about that. "You just saved my life, Mac!" Charlie rambles as he looks at Mac- desperate to figure out what to do to help.

 

What do they do on TV? Oh. Press on the wound. That makes sense. Try and keep the blood inside. They use something, though? On TV? Charlie rips off his jacket, the black one with the tiger that he kinda likes a lot, but not more than he likes Mac having his blood on his inside. He can't help but whine a little when he pulls his left sleeve off, his arm hurts and taking the jacket off makes it hurt more worse. But he bunches it up and presses it hard against the circle of red on Mac's chest that keeps getting bigger.

 

Mac screams. It's scary and he doesn't even have much air in him to yell and he goes white and his eyes start to roll up but Charlie doesn't think that's a good idea so he slaps at Mac's face with his free hand -ow, the shock of the slap goes right up his probably broken arm -, because the other is still pressing hard and the hurt is worth it because Mac opens his eyes. And oh god Mac is crying - understandable, it looks like it hurts - but Mac doesn't really cry that much. 

 

Mac's one hand comes up and pushes on the jacket too, like he knows that's the right thing to do - that makes Charlie feel better, he wasn't sure, sure - and his other's grabs onto Charlie's probably broken arm, hard, desperately tight. He can't be dying if he's holding onto Charlie that tight, right? Right? 

 

"Charlie—" Mac starts, but then coughs and can't keep talking. Because there is blood on his chin now and it wasn't there before and that can't be good either and Mac is going to die people always die when they bleed from their mouth in movies!

 

Charlie doesn't know what to do for a long moment, so he lets Mac hold his arm too tight, right where it hurts but Charlie's not mad about that, it seems to be comforting Mac...What does he do? What do they do now? Ambulance. Mac needs like, eight doctors right now that can sew things shut and make it better. 

 

Charlie says: "I need to call for help," his voice is high and panicked and he doesn't think that'll help Mac not panic more but he can't help it. Some asshole with a gun just showed up and beat the shit out of him 'cause he wanted Frank and then shot Mac! And Mac killed the asshole. Charlie can't stop the panic any more than he can stop his nose from bleeding - or the gaping hole in Mac's chest from oozing blood either.

 

"Nine. One. One." Mac says, each word a struggle, and Charlie would be mad that Mac thinks he forgot the number but he kinda did.

 

He tries to get to his feet, but the floor has blood all over it and maybe Charlie's body doesn't want to listen to him anymore because he let it get all broken, and he slips and starts to fall, catching his not-broken arm on the corner of the bar and managing to keep himself on his feet, though his ribs are screaming at him too, they hurt from the kicks and they weren't has bad as his face so Charlie kind of forgot but he's pretty sure his ribs are fucked too, and he stumbles his way drunkenly to the phone on the wall.

 

He keeps his eyes on Mac as he shouts down the line. Tells them his friend has been shot, that he's at Paddy's Pub, the address - he knows it from years of drunken cab rides to and from Paddy's and can say the address in his sleep and he's still not even sure what his apartment's address is - and then Mac doesn't look so good and his eyes are drooping and he's not putting much pressure on the wound so Charlie hangs up the phone after saying the guy that shot him is like, way dead because they asked where the shooter was, and he run stumbles back over to Mac.

 

"I think you should stay awake," Charlie says, nearly shouts it because Mac is fucking bleeding to death and gasping for breath in a way that sounds like he's not getting enough air and oh shit the jacket is soaked through and Charlie is crying when Mac opens his eyes again, though he tells himself it's from relief and not because he's terrified that Mac is going to die in front of him on the floor of Paddy's. 

 

Mac's eyes keep drifting towards his feet, to the guy he fucking nailed in the face with Charlie's Rat Stick. Shit. Charlie looks, but the dude hasn't moved at all, not from where he fell with his arms all twisted up awkward, and Charlie hasn't checked but it's kind of not his first dead body. 

 

"He's dead," Charlie says, answering the question Mac can't seem to get enough breath to ask and Mac's eyes go wide. So Charlie keeps talking, 'cause Mac looks freaked out already, he really shouldn't be worrying about guys that go around stomping on people's arms and fucking shooting people! "You saved my life, man. That was so badass," Charlie tells him. His voice cracks, it always cracks but now it's so cracky that he's not sure Mac can understand him.

 

But Mac smiles at him, like he heard and it makes him happy. But his eyes are trying to close again. Mac's fighting it, Charlie can see that, but he's losing the battle.  Mac reaches up the hand that was holding onto Charlie, the other is over the wound but he's not really pressing on it anymore, and he touches the underside of that awkward booth that only the regulars ever sit at because the gang is way too loud sitting at the bar for casual alcoholics to sit at that table. Mac smiles, turns his head and smiles at him like he does on Christmas ever since that weird one that they realized their childhood holidays were kind of fucked up. It's not a good smile. It's a sad smile. Charlie hopes the sirens he hears are for Mac.

 

Then Mac's arm drops back down and his eyes close and Charlie actually lets out a sob, he's so scared. He presses on the wound and can feel Mac's chest rising up against his hand. But Mac won't wake back up, no matter how many times Charlie's bloody hand taps his face and Mac won't wake up so Charlie shouts his name from the tops of his lungs and that makes his ribs scream protests and then Charlie's vision goes spotty like it does when he's been screaming into his arms in his Bad Room, Mac told him once that it was from yelling and raising his air pressure too high. 

 

He shakes his head to clear his vision and his eyes land on the dead man and oh it's gross the spike in his eye and he's really dead and Charlie barely has enough time turn his head away from Mac before he's throwing up, coughing up swallowed blood from his nose and the three beers and four shots and a bit of cheese from a not so old trap he found while cleaning up the bar what feels like three years ago. The puking makes his face and head and ribs and _everything_ throb. But he didn't vomit into Mac's open wound - even Charlie knows that's a bad idea - so there's that. 

 

The sirens seem louder. It's South Philly, though. They could be for anyone. They fucking blew up Dennis's Ranger with a fucking rocket launcher and no one came. Charlie doesn't know when the slow tears he was crying has turned into big sobs, but he is sobbing, pressing on Mac's wound and feeling his too quick, not working breaths pushing against his hands. 

 

"Stay alive, Mac," Charlie whispers. He looks up to see bright blue and red lights filtering through the glass of the front windows, through the open place where the door was and the wailing of sirens almost has drowned out his words. "I love you man," he says to Mac, 'cause he heard somewhere that dying people can hear things when they're all dead and unable to move and he had nightmares about dying and hearing people say mean things like dirtgrub and idiot and other words - words Charlie can't remember someone ever calling him, but it sounded like a voice he knew, and made him more sad to hear 'my beautiful boy' than dirtgrub - while he was all stuck in the  dark, unable to move his body and he doesn't want Mac to hear bad things even though Charlie is kind of mad that Mac got shot protecting _him_ like that was a good trade off? 

 

And then there are people coming in and pulling him off of Mac and Charlie kind of loses his shit. Mac needs to hear nice things and not be talked about bad and by the time Charlie realizes the person he's fighting is there to help, his vision is all spotty from his air pressure and the guy has his broken arm twisted up behind his back, saying things like 'police' and 'stop fighting' and Charlie is so glad that there are people to help Mac here that aren't stupid dirtgrubs that nearly puke on their dying friends that he starts to really, really cry and scream, because sometimes things get messed up in Charlie's head and he screams instead of cries. Or he does both. He's done that since he was a kid and Mac helped him a bit and oh Mac is dying and Charlie can't breathe either but he's not the one with the bullet in his chest and Charlie bangs his head on the floor to maybe get himself to stop scrambling cry and scream up in his brain, but it doesn't help so he does it harder and then there's nothing so maybe, maybe he did that too hard. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

There's something in his throat and everything is pain and he tries to raise his hands up to get the thing out, even as he's struggling to open his eyes and someone is saying "Mac, Mac, stop," but he can't get his eyes open and he can't really raise his arms up and everything hurts but there's something for him to be really upset about he can't remember what but it was important, and there's something in his fucking throat and it hurts and the person saying his name, a woman, she gets hold of his wrists and she keeps saying Mac and he knows her voice but he can't…he can't get away and he hurts and he struggles more for a moment, trying to get away, get whatever is making him hurt away, but it's too much and he feels himself slipping away before he even gets his eyes cracked open. Someone else starts screaming, high and angry: "Don't hurt him you bitch," and the woman says "I'm trying to keep him from hurting himself, Charlie!" And yeah. That was Charlie yelling at Dee and that's important too but Mac can't stay awake anymore and he drifts off to Charlie screaming the word Bitch.  

* * *

 

Mac's eyes open before he even really registers that he's awake, not that he can see clearly when he first opens his eyes. There's something on his face and it's blowing cold air and he doesn't like it. He can't really think and he can't really move, and both are scary, but he also kind of doesn't care? That fact and the dotted tile ceiling above him clues him in to where he is, a hospital, though he's not sure how long it's taken him to reach this conclusion. He's not even sure it's the first time he's having these thoughts…All he knows for sure is that his whole body is heavy and floating at the same time and his chest feels weird and throat is so dry it hurts. 

 

He coughs. That is a bad idea. Pain flares in his chest and for a minute he thinks he's going to pass out from the pain but it spikes back down and someone is moving in his shitty peripheral vision. He starts to roll his head that way, but the person leans forward and it's Dee. Dee with dark circles under her eyes and her hair up in a messy bun and if Mac was more aware, he'd notice the red around her eyes and that she's ruined her manicure biting her nails to the quick, but he doesn't because everything is still confused and fuzzy and then she fucking bursts into tears and that honestly scares him more than anything else so far (and waking up in a hospital bed is scary as fuck). He's seen Charlie cry (more times than Charlie would like to admit to) and he's seen Dennis cry (not that Mac is dumb enough to ever mention that to anyone else in the gang), even fucking Frank, but never Dee in all the years he's known her. Not sober, anyway. 

 

The room is dark, dim as much as a hospital room can get. And Dee is reaching out, putting a hand on his forehead, and crying and Mac is so confused because he's not really sure why he's here and why they've got him on what feels like _all_  the drugs. Mac's woken up in a hospital bed before, too much booze and he was dragged in to get his stomach pumped or too stupid of a Project Badass stunt that had him cracking his head on the cement outside Paddy's, but he's never been this drugged up, this confused. 

 

Dee must see his confusion in his eyes. "You were shot," she tells him, like that's as common as 'you drank too much whiskey, dipshit.' 

 

Mac frowns at her, because he thinks this is a shitty time for joking around, given his current status as laying in a damn hospital bed. Frowning makes him remember the cold air on his face (damn he is stoned) and reaches up to pull the mask off, because that's what it is, it's an oxygen mask. Dee catches his slow moving hand by the wrist and is able to press his hand back down to the bed with embarrassingly little force. Mac can bench press at least twice her weight and he can't lift his damn arm up right now.

 

"Don't touch that," she tells him. "I think you need it. You almost died, dickbag." Bedside manner is not a thing the Reynolds Twins possess, but Dee is crying and looks kind of freaked, so Mac ignores the insult. 

 

"Wha—" he starts to ask, but the act of speaking is not something his throat will really allow right now. Mac's maybe tried deep throating a few times now (and if he's honest, a few times with Carmen, back when he was 'so far in the closet he could see Narnia,' as she told him when they broke up) and his throat feels like it did after trying to do that, but times a thousand. He starts to cough and oh. Oh that hurts so bad that maybe, by the time Dee has removed the mask and tilting ice chips into his mouth from a plastic cup, Mac is crying too. But crying from pain is totally not bad ass, so it's just the cold air from the mask causing his eyes to tear up. It doesn't matter that the mask is closed and only blowing on his mouth and nose.

 

Dee sets the mask back on his face, and sets the cup down. Then her hand is on his forehead again, thumb brushing his hair and Mac would lie to anyone who asked, but it feels kind of nice and it's grounding and that's good because he's starting to spiral. Because he's realizing that Dee isn't joking - he was shot. That's scary. And he thinks he's missing something. Something he doesn't really want to think about but has to. But every time he tries and think about it, his heart thuds weirdly in his chest and breathing gets worse.

 

And oh. He can't really breathe. Dee is telling him he's okay, but he's not sure he is. Not when a monitor starts beeping really loudly and his chest is heaving for breath and that really, really hurts. But he can't really get any air, not even with the damn cold oxygen blowing directly in his face and it feels like it's suffocating him, not helping, so he tries again to pull it off, but Dee's stronger than he is and Mac hates being weak. He fucking hates it more than anything and he did something bad, he failed somewhere, he knows it, because there's something _bad_ that happened, other than him getting shot and he knows it, but his brain is useless and all it is screaming is that he can't breathe and that his chest hurts and he hates being weak and crying, but he is, great heaving sobs between gasps for breath and neither actions are helping each other or his pain and he tries to sit up and Dee actually has to lean over and press his shoulders to the bed but this tiny woman that he can lift with one hand is able to hold him down with her big hands and he can't fucking _breathe_  something bad happened, he knows it. The fucking alarm won't stop beeping either! 

 

"Mac?" Dee asks, sounding small and scared and confused and hitting a red button next to his bed, the call button, he realizes belatedly. For some reason that's when it hits him: why is Dee the one next to him? Why is she alone?

 

Mac reaches up and grabs her arm and he can't _breathe_  but he forces out the words: "Where's Charlie?" Once they leave his mouth he knows. That's why he's so scared. He can't remember it all too clearly, but he gets a flash of Charlie curled up on the floor of Paddy's and blood on Charlie's face and _oh God_  did Charlie get killed? He got shot and Charlie got shot worse. _Shot dead_.

 

"Oh," Dee says, and twists around so she's not next to his head anymore, more even with his hips, though she keeps holding one of his shoulders down, to keep him in the bed and Mac doesn't mind because he's got his hand on her still, clinging and gasping and sobbing (weak, pathetic, needy). "Right there, Mac. He's…he's kinda okay." Dee's hesitance does not make Mac calm down.

 

Mac can see it's Charlie in the bed, but Charlie is out cold and there's alarms blaring so why is Charlie asleep through that? Is he in a coma? The beeping is going faster and Mac is confused and weak and he's still sobbing with air he doesn't have to give to sobs.

 

The nurse comes in then, looking mildly alarmed. "Mr. McDonald, you need to calm down," she tells him. Mac almost doesn't realize she's talking to him because no one calls him 'Mr.' any time except for hospitals and police precincts and that's kinda not the focus of his freak out right now, okay? Charlie's probably dying!

 

Dee mutters 'no shit,' and Mac is thinking the same thing. Never in the history of anything has telling someone that is freaking out to calm down worked. Never. And it's not working now. Mac ignores the nurse, who is saying something about getting a doctor for meds and whatever. Because Charlie is still out cold and who knows if he'll ever wake up!? 

 

"What's wrong with him?" Each word is a struggle to get out and Mac's heart feels like it's going to bruise itself against his rib cage it's beating so hard. 

 

"With Charlie?" Dee asks, and gives a nervous little laugh. "Everything." 

 

Mac opens his mouth to ask what the hell she means by that, damn it he can't breathe enough to ask that, _goddamn it Dee_ , but she must see it on his face because she moves back into his line of sight and she's rubbing his shoulder in a way that's supposed to be comforting but also kind of like she doesn't really know how to do that (no shit). "No. I was — breathe, Mac. Shit! -- I was kidding. He's gonna be fine. He was just being Charlie and freaking out too much. The doctors sedated him a little." 

 

Charlie will be fine. Mac clings to that assurance. Dee gives that nervous laugh again. He hates that laugh.

 

"Well. They gave him _a lot_  of sedatives. It's _Charlie_. It took like, three tries to get the dose right and the doctor came in and was all 'He can't need more! That's not possible' and then was like 'bwaahhh' when he saw Charlie still yelling. I think he might be a new record holder at the hospital-" Dee is saying, overacting and doing the voices but then someone is taking his hand by the wrist - the one that's not clinging to Dee - and he flinches and turns his head in time to see the nurse with a syringe and he must have an IV in that hand, and he wants to open his mouth to argue that he's good now, he's not freaking out anymore except he kind of is and he's not sure he has the breath to say that at all and so maybe the drugs are a good thing? 

 

Dee pats his shoulder more gently, less frantic now that Mac is going from gasping like he just ran a marathon while he was still a smoker to just kind of sort of out of breath like when he jogs up the stairs to his and Dennis's apartment. And Mac realizes that her previous rambling about Charlie and sedatives was a trick to get him to focus on her and not the nurse coming at him. 

 

And then that's kind of the last coherent thought Mac has for a while. 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Charlie is trying very hard to be calm. Okay? Because the last time he wasn't — okay, the last, like, four times — they kept sticking him with needles and putting him in cuffs that attach to the bed and he really doesn't like that. Especially since they had to poke him like, three times the first time 'cause he pulled out his IV in his attempt to get to Mac, and that was annoying as hell, being poked like five times because he kept pulling away and the nurses kept missing his like vein or whatever, because of it. All he had wanted was to make sure that Dee wasn't hurting Mac! Or was that the second time he freaked out? That might have been the second time. He got scrambled up again and seeing Mac with a tube down his throat like the dying people on TV and Dennis and Dee's Nazi grandfather and it all convinced him that the doctors were lying when they said Mac would be okay so he started fighting them the second time he woke up. Third and fourth were because of the first two times and he got kind of mad at the nurse and Dee when the meds were wearing off…he threatened Dee. And maybe the nurse? The point is…Point is, he's trying to be calm here. He's trying very hard, and they must believe him because they've let up on pretty much all the sedatives and they even untied him. But they kept on the pain meds through the IV. And maybe something to make him a little calmer than normal? Or maybe he's used up all his excited for a while? He thinks they told him what they were giving him, but who kept track of drug names? 

 

Either way. He's been good. Ate his dinner which was hard with one arm in a cast, but probably easier than eating all tied up, and it made his face scream at him in pain when he chewed, but when they saw that he ate they let him move from his bed to the wheelchair so he could sit by Mac's bed, which was kinda cool of them. Even if he doesn't need a wheelchair, because his legs are like, the only part of him that don't hurt. Mac is asleep and Dee is asleep on the little couch in their fancy room. Dee told him Frank called and donated a lot of money to the hospital or some shit, and now Mac and him were in a private room and together and that was cool as hell, if Charlie was being honest. Even if this was all Frank's fault, and Frank hadn't been in to see them because he was 'cleaning things up,' it was still pretty cool of him to make it so they were comfortable. Or that was the drugs. Well, Frank was kind of paying for the drugs, wasn't he, so it was all cool of Frank. 

 

Maybe? Charlie's sitting here kind of staring into space and trying to figure out how pissed he is at Frank while he waits for Mac to wake up. Mac's been up a few times, Dee said, but not when Charlie was, which was probably a good thing considering all the yelling? Mac didn't need to hear Charlie yelling right now, he's been shot! Mac being awake would be sweet - Charlie would feel a lot better if he could see for himself that Mac was waking up - but he gets it. Being shot must kind of suck. He'd try and stay asleep too. Still…he kind of wants to poke Mac awake? But he gets the feeling that if he did that, he'd be in big trouble. Dee would squawk at him more than she has been squawking at him to calm down and stop yelling and to just listen to the doctors because he was hurt and they'd give him 'the good shit' if he just stopped fighting. And the nurses with their needles full of sedatives would probably have something to say too. He really does not want to get tied up again. 

 

So Charlie instead pokes at his swollen shut eye. Mostly because it feels weird as shit, his skin all swollen like that. It must look funny too. He hasn't really looked in the mirror yet. He knows he must look awful, because that dude hit him in the face with the gun _a lot_ and kicked him too and a nurse tried to tell him what bones were broken, but he stopped listening when she said he broke his eye sock because he's pretty sure either she was messing with him, or he was too stoned to be listening about it anyway, and stopped. That whole side of his face feels too big and heavy and hot, and it fucking hurts just breathing, and he has to keep his mouth open to breathe because his nose is broken and too swollen to breathe through and breathing with his mouth open sucks because it reminds him of kids in elementary school telling him he was dumb and a mouth-breather and he didn't know what that meant and--

 

Charlie's admittedly nonlinear line of thought is broken by the door to the room being thrown open and Dennis comes running in looking like Charlie felt the last few times he woke up and screamed at Dee — he looks nuts! Like, his eyes are really wild and his hair is a mess and he looks between Mac in his bed and Charlie next to him and then over at Dee snoring quietly on the little couch and Charlie knows Dennis is going to shout, he can see him pulling air in and his shoulders going back and Charlie thinks this room has had too much yelling in it, even with all Frank's money and they're going to get kicked out and Mac still has a lot of tubes in him, so he cuts Dennis off before he can get the words out of his face.

 

"Aw, man. Don't wake Dee up." Which seems to be a thing to say to stop a Dennis rant, because Dennis closes his mouth. Cool. He should remember that. But he's not sure he'll ever get a chance to use that one again. "I don't think she's slept much," he adds in, in case the more he talks, the less Dennis yells —and it's true too, Charlie doesn't think Dee has even left the hospital since she got here. 

 

It seems to kind of work. Dennis walks into the room and sits in the chair next to Charlie's wheelchair. He's on Charlie's swollen shut side, so Charlie turns his head to look at Dennis. Dennis looks at him, then back at Mac. 

 

"What the fuck happened?" Dennis asks, quietly, so quietly that if Charlie were asleep like Mac or Dee, he wouldn't have heard the question. So good. No more almost shouting Dennis. But now Charlie has to answer the question and that's not so good.

 

"Uh, when?" Charlie asks. Because a lot has happened since Dennis left for North Coda. How is Charlie supposed to figure out where Dennis wants him to start? That's why he asks, and not because he's kind of scared to tell Dennis the answer -that Mac got shot protecting _him_  like a dumbass.

 

"Start with the shooting, Charlie," Dennis says, and he sounds as tired as Dee did before she told Charlie she was going to sleep once the nurse said Charlie could sit with Mac. And he sounds kind of frustrated - which Charlie totally gets, he's super frustrated too, because Mac got shot _protecting him_  and because Mac won't wake up and tell Charlie he's okay, but he's got a lot of pain medicine in him and maybe something to calm him down. He knows it's a lot of pain medicine because his face and arm and ribs and everything doesn't hurt all that much and his body is buzzing and—

 

"Charlie," Dennis says, and it's not a tone he's heard from Dennis before. It's almost begging. Dennis doesn't beg. For some reason, that, more than anything else today, makes Charlie's eyes tear up and he looks down at his legs in the weird cold hospital dress and blinks until he's not crying because he doesn't like to cry. Not even drugged up and in a hospital dress.

 

He hears Dennis pull in a breath to talk again, maybe not so nicely this time, so Charlie starts talking because he really doesn't want Dennis to yell because he'll yell back and then they'll drug him up and put him in the ties again and he'll be asleep and tied up when Mac wakes up. "We were closed and I was cleaning up and Mac was down in the basement," Charlie starts and oh his voice is all shaky and weird but he knows he can't not tell Dennis so he keeps going. "And this dude kicked in the door and he had a gun. He was looking for Frank and I said I didn't know where he was and he was kicking me and shit and…and then Mac came out and hit him in the head with my Rat Stick and the guy shot Mac. But Mac killed the guy." Fuck that was hard to say, and yeah maybe Charlie has to sneak his not broken hand up to wipe at his eyes to hide the tears but he can see Mac laying there with blood on his chin and dying and fuck Charlie can't breathe very good for a minute until he remembers that he's here now and Mac is breathing fine.

 

Dennis doesn't say anything for a long time. He doesn't call Charlie out for crying and shaking, which is kind of nice, but he doesn't say anything either which is kind of scary because a quiet Dennis is not always a good thing - it's never a good thing, actually. So Charlie sneaks a look over at him. Dennis is staring at Mac. Mac only has one of those nose things on his face now, which is way better than the dying person tube and there's the IV and another tube disappearing up into his side, but he looks much better than he did, Charlie thinks. Maybe he's hopeful, but Charlie thinks Mac looks a little less pale too. 

 

Finally, Dennis says: "I thought Dee was joking when she called me. I hung up on her. I should've known it wasn't a joke. She was upset.  She can't act that well." Only a small smile at the dig at his sister's shitty acting, and then he's back to frowning. "She texted me pictures of you and Mac." 

 

Charlie thinks that was kind of a shitty thing to do, taking pictures of them all unconscious and sending them to Dennis, but then again, Dennis wouldn't have believed her if she hadn't done that. They did some shitty things, in the beginning, to get him back from North Coda before they became bitter and gave up. So Charlie doesn't say anything. He doesn't really have any more words to say, anyway. The last ones are kind of sticking in his throat still.

 

After a while, Dennis talks, maybe just because the room is too quiet except for the beeping that is steady and showing that Mac's got a heartbeat. Charlie kind of likes the steadiness of the sound. "I couldn't move my flight up because I didn't have the damn fee and Frank's not answering his phone." There is real anger rising up at the mention of Frank, and Charlie thinks that Dennis might yell again, but instead he sighs and says: "I had to borrow it from Mandy. That's why it's taken me a few days to get back here." And Charlie has a moment to think: 'huh, it's been days?' because he's been all out of it on various drugs.

 

The thing is, Charlie doesn't know why Dennis came back from North Coda in the first place after moving there, and he doesn't know how cool Mandy is with Dennis, but she let him come to see the kid? So probably kind of cool? Either way, Dennis doesn't seem too happy that he had to borrow money from her. And Charlie is afraid that this might get him yelling, be the thing that finally makes Dennis get shouty like he does when he's upset, but no. He just falls silent and slowly, Charlie thinks he should say something. "I'm sorry you had to cut your trip short, man."

 

Dennis looks at him, but it's in that way that says he's not really looking at Charlie, he's looking at things in his head and not at Charlie at all, so Charlie looks back at Mac sleeping -sleeping and not in a coma, Charlie reminds himself. After a while, Charlie finds he's starting to nod off, jerking his head to wake up like a junkie. He does it like six times before Dennis says "Jesus Christ, Charlie, go lay down and go to sleep."

 

Charlie wants to argue that he doesn't need to, he wants to be awake when Mac wakes up, but he wants the nurses and doctors and stuff to know he's trying to be a good patient.  And his ribs are kind of killing him, and his nose hurts when he snaps his head back up. He gets up and starts shuffling to his bed, but has to stop after a step or two because he forgot he's attached to the IV pole. He's pulling that with him when he hears the best sound ever: "Fuck, Charlie!" In Mac's tired, but awake and talking and not dying gasping for breath, voice. He turns to see Mac blinking at him. "Hold your gown closed." Mac says to him. 

 

And Charlie is so excited, he nearly falls in his hospital slipper socks in his rush to get to Mac, he doesn't even get sad about the big spaces between Mac's words, or how croaky his voice sounds. He's too busy letting out a little bubble of a surprised laugh that sounds kind of freaked out, even to Charlie's own ears, and then he's got his arms around Mac's neck, cast and all, he's afraid to touch any lower, and it hurts to bend over the rails of the bed and it hurts his face to be leaning down, clinging to Mac, his forehead pressed against Mac's shoulder, but he doesn't care.

 

"Calm down, Charlie!" Dennis says, way too loud.

 

But Charlie doesn't care if Dennis is yelling, because Mac kind of weakly pats his back and says, very quietly: "I'm okay." Like a promise. Like he knows how scared Charlie was, even when he mixed up shouting and crying, he was so scared and he was so sad and upset that Mac was dying because of him and if anyone says anything after that, Charlie can't really hear it because he's trying very hard to not make it sound like he's crying into Mac's shoulder and Mac's stopped rubbing his back to hold some of the hospital dress in his hand and his hand is warm and Charlie can hear him breathing over his own wet breathing, and that's enough to keep him crying. He didn't think he'd hear Mac breathing ever again.

 

Eventually, Mac tugs on his shoulder. Charlie's not sure if it's been minutes or hours or less. He's never been good with time. Time is too weird. It goes fast and slow and he's not sure it's really a thing, time? But Mac is kind of pulling on the dress and Charlie gets that he's supposed to stand up, but as it turns out, this was not a good idea to stand like this, all bent over the bed rail on his toes so he could reach Mac. The muscles around his ribs have all locked up on him, drawn tight and angry. Standing up is going to hurt.

 

"Charlie. I need—" Mac starts and breaks off, coughing. 

 

He doesn't finish his sentence. Charlie will get him whatever he needs, he just has to stand up first.  "What, bro?" He asks, voice tight, and he knows Mac can hear he's hurting, because Mac's the only one that's ever been able to call him out on shit like saying he was okay when he's not, but Charlie's not sure what Mac could do about it anyway, so he doesn't worry too much about the tense pain in his own voice. But maybe he can help Mac? So he grits his teeth tight - not too tight, they're wobbly in the back - and tries to keep them closed on the groan that leaves him without his permission as he stands up.

 

Charlie's not sure if it's him or the room that sways for a minute when he's back upright. Chances are it's him. But stranger things have happened. He holds onto the bed rail for a moment, looking down at Mac, who's looking up at him for a moment before he coughs again. 

 

"Give him the ice chips," Dee says suddenly and Charlie jumps because maybe he forgot that they weren't alone? Or is it because he didn't know Dee was awake? Charlie's not sure. He reaches for the cup but his hand is shaking because all of him is shaking again and he's not sure if it's pain or relief that Mac's awake, or maybe he never stopped shaking since telling Dennis what happened, but Mac's gone white with pain and he's sweating and coughing and Charlie's stops halfway to the cup on the bedside table because he suddenly can't breathe or move and he can't do anything but shake and look at Mac cough.

 

"Cover your ass, Charlie," Dee says behind him, close enough that she braces a hand on his back as she reaches over to get the cup for Mac, and it kind of makes him a bit inside-crawly to feel her hand on him, but she's been here to help and she's helping Mac so he doesn't say anything or move away. He's not even sure he can move. And they can all shut up. He has underwear on. New ones too. That Dee bought, because the nurse told her he needed a change of clothes and Dee went some discount store rather than go inside his apartment - she said it was because it's gross, but maybe she was scared too, in case someone was still looking for Frank. So maybe she's been helping him too, and he' shouldn't feel all skin-crawly but he can't help it. 

 

She lets go to stand closer to Mac than he is - he is stuck halfway between the bed and the table - and Charlie can breathe in again without her hand on him, and Mac looks so bad as he coughs again, he's got a hand to just about where he was shot, all protectively.  Dee gives him a bit of ice and hits the red button by Mac's head that Charlie was tempted to press a few times, because there isn't often red buttons that you can press in real life, but it calls the nurses, so he's glad he never pressed it. Charlie stands there, even as the ice makes Mac stop coughing and fuck Mac got shot. _Mac got shot helping him_.

 

"Hey," Dennis says, touching his arm. It's so much gentler than Dennis ever sounds that Charlie turns to look at him. He doesn't really mind Dennis touching him normally, Dennis didn't do that weird hand thing to him while naked, but it kind of makes the buzzing in the place where the back of his head meets his neck worse all the same. "You should lay down, man."

 

Charlie can't really argue with him. He can't really wrap his head around the twins being _nice_  either. But everything is so buzzy and tight in Charlie's head and chest and fingers that he nods and actually remembers to take the IV pole with him as he heads to his bed. It's only like, five steps from Mac, just little steps 'cause his ribs hurt when he walks so it's kind of a shuffle.  But it seems so far away from the other man.

 

Charlie curses under his breath as he climbs up on the bed, why are they so high? Stupid beds. He lays back and pulls the really thin blanket over him, trying to look like a good patient, and fights the urge to pull it over his head as the nurse comes in. Charlie's not ashamed that he hides from things sometimes, but he doesn't want to look weird. Weird might get him another doctor talking to him. A head shrinker like last time he was at the hospital, explaining why he put his foot back in the bear trap. The dumb head bitch never understood why. Idiot. He finally left Charlie alone when he said he was drunk, which was a lie, of course, but easy to believe, he guessed? Everyone got drunk on Super Bowl Sunday.

 

Charlie stays flat on his back, but with his head tilted towards Mac instead. He tries to listen to what the nurse says, but his head is too buzzy and he's can't really make out any words. Then she leaves the room and everything is quiet except for breathing and machines and that's not really quiet at all and all the words Charlie wants to say are caught in his throat and stuck there - like the tube that was stuck down _Mac's throat_  - and it's really hard to breathe again. The buzzing is louder and louder and harder under his skin, making his lips tingle and his bones ache even where they weren't aching before, and he thinks he might start to scream but his eyes are still watering, so maybe he won't scramble up cry and scream and he's not sure he can breathe enough to scream anyway, so he just grips the blanket in his free hand so hard his knuckles go as white as the fabric.

 

The door opens again. It's a man this time. Doctor, Charlie realizes. They don't wear white coats, doctors in real life. But Charlie knows he's a doctor because he says hello to Mac and introduces himself as Doctor Perry, his plumbologist. Dennis and Dee block Charlie's view of what the doctor is doing, but he is talking and asking Mac questions and Charlie is just so happy he can hear Mac answering questions, even in that weirdly breathless and hoarse voice, that he nearly zones out and misses it when the doctor says:

 

"You gave us all quite the scare, Mr. McDonald." That freaks Charlie out because he never heard of a doctor saying they were scared before. "Your surgeon will be in to speak with you in the morning," the doctor keeps saying. "She can give you a better overview on what happened during your surgery. Luckily, Dr. Silva is amazing and she was able to get your heart restarted when you went into cardiac arrest. You'll—"

 

Someone makes a sound, a choking kind of sound, and it's only when everyone turns to look at him does Charlie realize he's the one that made it. There are a lot of things in the world Charlie doesn't know. But he watches a lot of TV. He knows what cardiac arrest is. It means Mac's heart stopped. It means Mac was _dead_. Dead because he saved Charlie's ass.

 

Charlie is moving, throwing back the covers before he realizes he needs to get up. He starts towards the bathroom, almost running, and once again feels the tug of the IV in his hand so he grabs it and then he's in the bathroom and nobody's looking at him which is good because he's bent over with his ass flapping in the breeze as he vomits up his dinner that he was so careful to eat and oh fuck that hurts his face and ribs, but _Mac died_  and that hurts worse. 

 

He's crying again, stupid eyes. Gagging and there's nothing left to come out, and his throat is burning from the acid and there's a knocking on the bathroom door that he slowly realizes has been happening for a while. Someone is calling 'Mr. Kelly' and Dennis is calling his name too and Charlie thinks he should open the door or answer. He manages a weak "I'm okay," which sounds like a lie even to himself. The knocking stops.

 

He presses his shoulder against the wall and slides down it to his knees, and there's a tugging on his uncasted arm when he moves it and he remembers the IV in the back of that hand. He suddenly wants it out and uses his teeth to pull up the tape, then the fingers he can close on his casted arm to pull it out. The burn of tape pulling off hair and of the needle sliding out doesn't really help calm his pounding heart or make the tears soaking his face stop either. The blood that comes out, just a little trickle, is kind of nice, though. Until it soaks through his little hospital dress which just reminds Charlie of the last time he felt blood soak through cloth and then he's scrambling to throw up a second time even though he has nothing left to bring up.

 

He curls back up against the wall, his hand pressed against his eye, the one that's all swollen, which hurts but that's kind of the point, isn't it? It doesn't help and he's still crying and gasping and leaking snot out of his nose and by the time he realizes he should be muffling things like if he's in his Bad Room - Dennis got mad when his screaming scared away bar patrons before — it's too late and there's heavy knocking on the bathroom door.

 

He can't answer this time, he's sure if he opens his mouth he'll just start shrieking. After a long pause, the lock on the door pops - of course there would be a key - and the door opens. Charlie scrubs his free hand over his face, but anyone with eyes will know he was crying, shit, still is crying, and there's a not happy looking nurse from before looking down at him, Dennis over her shoulder. 

 

The nurse's eyes flick to the toilet, the removed IV leaking clear stuff all over the floor, and Charlie's hand bleeding where the IV was in the back of it, before she looks at Charlie again. Her anger seems to soften and she steps into the bathroom. Charlie can't actually lean away because he has nowhere to go. But he wants to. She crouches down in front of him. Charlie's eyes  move over to Dennis in the doorway, but the other man looks away like he's ashamed of Charlie - not the first time he's seen that look on Dennis's face - and moves away from the door. 

 

"I'll have to put this back in," the nurse says, holding up the dripping end of the IV. 

 

Charlie finds himself nodding. He didn't expect that to be what she said. He thought she'd yell at him. She shimmers and Charlie realizes he's crying _still_. He wants to curl up, pull his knees up to his chest and shut her and everything out, but he knows that he can't. 

 

She stands up, and offers her hand down to him. "Do you think you can stand?" She asks. 

 

Again, he doesn't speak. He's still not sure what will come out of his mouth if he opens it. But he nods and using the rail by the toilet and not her hand - he's not sure he can be touched right now - he's able to get to his feet. He sways for a second, but stays standing, all the years he's been drinking have really helped with saying upright when the ground goes funny, he thinks. 

 

She looks at him closely for a moment before nodding. "Come on, let's get you back in your bed." She tells him and she leads the way out of the room, going over to his bed. Mac is awake on his, looking all drugged up but blinking at Charlie with frowning eyebrows as he climbs back up onto the bed.

 

He expects the nurse to just jab the needle in him, but she doesn't. She stands next to the bed and lets him get settled, pulling out a roll of gauze from her pocket. She inclines her head to his hand that's still kind of bleeding and he holds it out. He shudders a little when she touches him, fingers on the inside of his wrist, but doesn't pull away.

 

"Your heart is going pretty fast," she says as she wraps the gauze around his hand a few times, where the IV was in the back of it. She doesn't sound mad or anything, and that makes Charlie look up at her. "I heard you had a bit of a shock, hearing about your friend over there scaring his doctors," she says, patting his hand once and letting it go as she finishes. He lets it drop to sit on his lap. He doesn't know what to say, if he can talk, so he stays silent.

 

She smiles at him, but it's the kind of smile Mac gave him right before he passed out, all sad, and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. "I'm going to get a clean IV needle for you. Before I go, can you tell me what your pain level is? It's almost time for more meds." She wants him to talk, he realizes. "On a scale of one to ten," she adds, when he's not answered. 

 

The whole pain scale confuses him - how do you put a number on how much things hurt? Hurt is different each time. Like right now, he's not sure if the hurt he's in is from his thoughts or his body...sometimes it's both and sometimes it's one or the other and how do you put a number on that? Does he hurt worse than when he put his foot in a bear trap? Who knows? He can't remember because his brain went fuzzy on him each time, going kind of floating so that the pain didn't hurt as much - but Charlie thinks that had to hurt more than he does now. Except he does kind of hurt a lot, his face is one big throb of pain and heat, and he can't really get a full breath in with his ribs screaming at him. So Charlie holds up his newly bandaged hand, all five fingers splayed out, then two. Seven. He thinks. Charlie puts his shaking hand back in his lap. She hasn't moved away from him. 

 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kelly. Vomiting probably aggravated your injuries. I'll get you something for that, and maybe something to help you relax a little? It's almost nine. It'll help you sleep better."

 

No. Charlie looks up at her, eyes wide, and shakes his head frantically. His chest starts heaving again. What if he's asleep and something happens to Mac? Or if Mac thinks he doesn't care because he's always asleep? Or…? Or…?

 

She holds up her hands, a calm down gesture Charlie is used to. He doesn't freak out a lot, like he used to when he was a kid, but he does still know the gesture. "Nothing heavy like before. You might not even consciously notice its effects, but it'll help you calm down and get the rest your body needs."

 

He's not sure he can say no - they just drugged him before - but he wants to. He's about to shake his head no, when Mac says all sad and quiet: "It's okay, Charlie."

 

So Charlie nods and lets her go get what she needs. Dennis comes up to stand between the two beds, from where he was sitting on the couch, out of the way. He looks tired and old. "Dee's gone home to shower and sleep in a bed. I'm staying tonight."

 

"Cool," Mac says, voice heavy and sleepy, but kind of dopey in love with Dennis too. How did Mac ever think he was hiding that? Why doesn't Dennis want that? Charlie just nods to show he heard, still unsure if he can talk. Or wants to. 

 

"Yeah," Dennis says, and scrubs his hands over his face. He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn't. He just pulls the chair that was by Mac's bed over so it's in the middle of them and sits down.

 

By the time the nurse comes back, Mac is asleep in his bed, head turned toward Charlie's. She does as she promised, putting his IV in a vein inside his wrist, which is red from the cuffs they had on him and kind of hurts when she touches it. Then she's giving him first the painkiller and then whatever it was she said would calm him down. She pats his hand once she's done, but hasn't asked him anything that requires a verbal response. With another worried little smile, she's gone.

 

It takes a while, opiates always make Charlie's brain go way too fast, but eventually, whatever else she gave him must work against that and he's falling asleep. 

 

+++

 

The next time Charlie wakes, the room is light and someone is talking quietly. He blinks his eyes closed against the light, and then keeps them closed because it's Dennis talking and he doesn't know who he's talking to, but Charlie's not sure he wants to talk to them.

 

"Yeah…yeah," Dennis is saying quietly. "They'll be okay, I think. Mac was shot in the lung, and Charlie got beat up a bit, but they're both tough." It's the softest Charlie has ever heard Dennis talk to someone. He feels guilty for listening in, but it's not like can help it. Well, he could move, show Dennis that he's awake, but he's not sure he wants to interrupt the quiet tone in Dennis's voice. 

 

After a minute, listening in on the phone, Charlie realizes, Dennis talks again. "Yeah. They're both freaked out, a bit. Charlie lost it when he found out Ma—Mac's heart stopped during surgery." The stutter is very much not Dennis. The way his voice broke when he said that last part, it makes Charlie's stomach drop. 

 

More silence, then a sad little laugh from Dennis. "Yeah. Thank you. He'll be fine. He's awake and talking and everything." Another pause then: "Thank you, Mandy. I'll get you your money back. I'm sorry I missed Brian's birthday party." A little laugh, happier this time, then: "Okay. Thanks. Bye." 

 

That was more thank yous than Charlie is used to hearing from Dennis. And he sounded pretty easy talking to Mandy on the phone. Maybe they were getting used to each other? Maybe Dennis was going to go back to live in North Coda? Charlie hoped not. Dennis being gone made Mac so sad and weird, all he did was pout and workout and drink alone. Charlie isn't sure he could watch that again. It almost broke Mac---

 

"I know you're awake, Charlie," Dennis says, voice still soft, but a bit louder than when he was on the phone.

 

Charlie flinches and opens his eyes. "Sorry," he says, voice raw and scrapey even though he hadn't yelled or anything the night before, he didn't think. Sometimes Frank says he screamed all night from nightmares that Charlie didn't even remember having, so who knew?

 

Dennis is sitting in the chair between them. He looks at Charlie and runs a hand over his face. Charlie wonders if he slept at all. Mac, Charlie can see is still asleep. Getting shot must take a lot out of someone. _Dying_  must take a lot out of you —

 

"Hey. Hey. Charlie. Look at me, alright?" Dennis says, suddenly standing by his bed and Charlie must have been freaking out, because he is breathing so hard again.

 

Charlie looks up at him. Dennis smiles, and reaches down to rub his shoulder. "There. Breathe, man. Mac's fine. He was awake and talking to the nurses about an hour ago." 

 

Charlie nods, because he feels like he should nod. He should deny that he's freaking out, any other time he would, but he's laid up in a hospital bed and Mac _died_.

 

"Ah-ah," Dennis says, shaking his head down at Charlie. "Listen to me. He's fine, he'll be fine. The lung doctor said he's in great shape, and young. He'll be fine, Charlie, I promise."

 

The thing is, Dennis rarely makes promises. Charlie wants to be able to hold him to this one.

 

"There we go. Breathe with me man," Dennis says, smiling down at Charlie, a rare, real smile that isn't secretly angry or tinged with sadness like most of Dennis's smiles are since he came back from North Coda, maybe before. Charlie breathes. Dennis always knows how to cut through his brain's bullshit, make him breathe right when he can't breathe because of all the things running around his head. 

 

"There we are," Dennis says, and he only sounds a little bit tired. He reaches back and drags the shitty hospital chair over so he's sitting close to Charlie. 

 

"Thanks," Charlie says, quietly, always a little embarrassed when his anxieties get the best of him, when people can _see_  he's freaking out. 

 

Dennis waves a hand. "Don't worry about it, man. It's been a very rough couple of days." 

 

Charlie smiles at him, and knows it's a sad smile, but a thank you smile too. He hopes Dennis knows that. He doesn't know what else to say, so he drifts into silence again, and Dennis doesn't seem to mind, playing absently on his phone. 


	5. Chapter 5

Charlie gets sent home from the hospital first. He knew it was going to happen, He wasn't the one shot and all, but it still sucks. Frank is still kind of MIA, and the hospital staff don't want Charlie to be alone, given that he's still on a 'shit ton of medication' - Dennis's phrase - and he's still pretty beat up, so they say he shouldn't be alone too much, so Dee takes him to Mac and Dennis's place. There's an open bed there, after all, while Mac's in the hospital.

 

It makes sense. But Charlie hates it. Hates sitting on the couch without Mac or Dennis in the place. Hates that he's wearing new clothes - grey sweatpants and a plain black t-shirt that Dee bought at the discount store, not quite in his size - the pants are too big on the waist and too long, the t-shirt is a size larger than he normally buys too. He's not sure if Dee thinks he's a fatass or if she's not great at buying clothes for dudes. No one asked Charlie's opinion, about where he'd like to go or if he even wanted to leave the hospital (he didn't) or even what size clothes he wore, Dee just showed up with stuff when all he wants are his own jeans and his black tiger jacket back. He wants his own clothes because that would mean he didn't get it ruined with a mix of his and Mac's blood.

 

So yeah. He's resentful. And angry. Angry that Dennis pulled Dee to the side and they argued about who was leaving with Charlie and where he would go, while he sat there on the hospital bed dressed in normal clothes and blood stained sneakers, looking over at Mac who was sitting up in the bed now but was still too pale and drugged out looking in Charlie's opinion. He hated that Dennis told Dee to keep Charlie's medication hidden, because he apparently needed help controlling his drug use? Fuck off, he had muttered, but the twins ignored him. And true to her word to Dennis, Dee holds onto Charlie's pills, the pain meds and the anxiety pills the doctors apparently decided he needs. He hates that he kind of agrees with them.

 

The first thing he does at the apartment is take a shower, because Dee says he smells like a hospital and then he realizes he does and it's not a good smell. Dee has to tape a garbage bag over the cast on his arm for him, so that he doesn't get it all wet and smelly. He remembers that from when Dennis broke his legs. And then there are fresh clothes - apparently she bought a lot of sweatpants for Charlie and a four pack of the t-shirts? Whatever. He should be grateful, he should be, but he just doesn't care.

 

Dee makes him eat pizza with her before she'll give him his pain medication. Says he shouldn't take pills on an empty stomach and Charlie doesn't argue with her. She offers him the little anxiety pill too. Charlie doesn't take it. They sit on the couch and flip channels until Dee falls asleep with the remote in her hand and Charlie sighs his way over to Mac's room to sleep on his bed. Someone has made it, with an actual bottom sheet and all - probably Dee. 

 

Charlie doesn't remember going to sleep, but suddenly he is in Paddy's again and instead of Mac hitting the guy with his Rat Stick, the guy shoots Mac, like, eight times while Charlie watches, trying to scream but can't and it is scary, like hands over his mouth and touching him when he's not expecting it scary, and Mac is dying and the guy is pointing the gun at Charlie, and Charlie thinks 'good, do it' and then there is a bang and he wakes up with a gasp.

 

The apartment is quiet. Except for Dee's snoring. Charlie thinks of Paddy's. Of Mac's blood and a bit of his all over the floor. Of the dead guy's eye goo. The idea of it all just sitting there, sinking more and more into the floor, makes Charlie's skin crawl.

 

He's up and tucking his feet into his shoes before he thinks about what he's doing. He knows he's not going to sleep again. Tiptoeing out of the room, Charlie sees Dee curled up on the couch, long limbs managing to fit somehow. Charlie goes to her pocketbook, finds the keys there, and pulls on a sweatshirt from the hooks by the door. From the smell, he knows it's Mac's. The sleeves are too long, but none of Charlie's clothes fit, so whatever.

 

He needs to clean the blood up, is his only thought. 

* * *

 

 "Jesus Christ, Charlie!" 

 

Charlie flinches, throwing himself back from the puddle of dried blood and bleach he's kneeling over, scrubbing. He tries to steady himself, but with one arm in a cast he can't balance right, and he falls on his back, the top of his head smacking the bar with a dull thud.

 

He can't seem to pull in a breath. Part of it is the sheer pain that he's suddenly aware of wrapping around his chest, but he's not really sure if he was breathing right before Dennis shouted. Huh. Dennis is standing over him, looking at him with a mix of concern and anger and Charlie can't take that right now. So he closes his good eye, balls his free hand into a fist. Dennis is silent, but Charlie can still feel him there. He can't look at him, though, he just can't. Instead, he presses his balled up fist to his swollen eye and cheek, pressing as hard as he can. It doesn't help. He pulls his hand back to swing his fist at his eye, but Dennis's hand wraps around his wrist and stops him.

 

"Dude!" Dennis says, sounding both shocked and disgusted - Charlie knows that tone of voice, he pulls it out of people quite often. "Fuck, man. Don't do that. Just breathe."

 

Charlie can't. He can't breathe. He can't get the blood up off the floor either and it's set in to the floor boards and they'll have to look at it every day and think 'this is where Charlie just laid there and got beat up until Mac came to help him and got shot because of it', 'this is where the dude died that Mac had to kill to protect Charlie' and 'this is where Mac fell down after getting shot and then _he died_  and almost didn't come back' and-and Charlie can't deal with the idea of all that blood being there forever. Charlie tries to roll away from Dennis, but he can't because he's got one broken rib on one side and two on the other side and he can't quite remember which side is which but the point is he tries, but has to stop when he's just twisted away a bit because it hurts either way he moves. He's dumb, but he's not a complete idiot, he knows he can't lay on his side on the hardwood floor. 

 

"Charlie. You need to breathe, man." Dennis says, quiet, next to him. He's rubbing Charlie's shoulder, slow little circles. He starts counting, one to ten, knowing Charlie's not good if he goes up much past that, he gets too worried about losing track - Dennis really is kind of good at getting Charlie to calm down, though Charlie is glad he's not yelling 'oi' at him right now. This is better. Charlie bites his lip hard enough to taste his own blood and he's shaking all over, but he manages to breathe in through his nose and hold it in after a few false starts or several one to ten counts from Dennis. Another couple more, and he can control his breathing all together. He's still shaking, but he can breathe. 

 

Slowly, he uncurls from where he's twisted himself, and pushes up so his back is against the bar. Dennis is kneeling on the floor - not something Charlie has ever seen him do - next to him, watching him. When Charlie glances at him, then away to the puddle of bleach all pink foamy from the blood, Dennis gives him a sad little smile. 

 

"You back with me, Charlie?" Dennis asks. 

 

Charlie nods. He doesn't want to talk yet. Dennis seems to get that because he nods too but doesn't press Charlie to talk, and moves so he's sitting next to Charlie, his back against the bar as well. He's pressed up against Charlie from shoulder to foot, and it is kind of nice and grounding in a way that biting his lip or pushing on his puffy eye isn't. Charlie knows Dennis can feel him shaking, but he's pretty sure the other man could _see_  him shaking, so he doesn't worry too much about it. Eventually, after what feels like an hour but could be just two minutes, the shaking pretty much stops except for a few odd tremors. It's light through the windows, but not very. Charlie's not sure how long he'd been at the bar, let alone how long Dennis has been with him. If he didn't have a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse under his belt, he'd be pretty freaked out that he doesn't know the answer to those questions.

 

He sighs, and closes his eyes, suddenly so exhausted he can't keep them open. "No, Charlie. You'll feel awful if you sleep there. Come on, up." Dennis says, tugging on his uninjured arm. 

 

Charlie groans. He means it to be because he doesn't want to get up, but it turns deeper, actually pain filled. He'd been sweating since Dennis called his name, probably before, but now he breaks out in a fresh sweat, nearly shaking again from the pain, and wraps his arms around his chest. 

 

"Jesus," Dennis mutters and lets go. Charlie keeps his eyes closed, glad Dennis gave up and left him to sleep right where he is. Except a moment later Dennis is back, tapping his shoulder with something cold. Charlie blinks open his eyes - well, eye - to see Dennis holding out his hand with two of Charlie's pain pills and one of the tiny anxiety pills, a beer in his other hand. "Take them," Dennis says, not really sounding like he expects Charlie to say no to the anxiety pill like he did to Dee, or is it that he won't let Charlie say no?

 

Charlie decides he doesn't want to find out which it is, and clumsily takes the pills, frowning at the chalky taste until he can fumble the beer up to his mouth. He drinks the whole thing in one go, surprisingly thirsty. 

 

"You weren't— not the whole thing—-" Dennis says, before his face settles on a look that clearly says 'fuck it' and he sets the empty bottle on the bar top. "Can you get up on your own?" 

 

Charlie nods and rolls to his knees before shakily standing up, hooking his arm on the bar to keep upright. Dennis doesn't touch him, but he does look ready to catch him, which is nice. "Come on," is all the instruction he gets from Dennis before the other man is leading him out the alley door to where his truck is parked.

 

Charlie nearly whites out from pain climbing in and Dennis gets mad after a minute of watching him try to fumble one handed with his seatbelt before reaching over and doing it for him, cursing under his breath the whole time. Only then does Charlie realize Dennis is _pissed_.

 

"I'm sorry—" He starts, right as Dennis clips the seatbelt in and shouts: "What the fuck, Charlie?"

 

"I said I'm sorry," Charlie says, resisting the urge to curl up in on himself on the seat because he knows that will hurt. He looks out the windshield instead, it's early, the sun isn't even all the way up. 

 

Beside him, Dennis sighs and starts the car. Charlie risks a glance at him as he drives forward out the alley, his knuckles are white on the steering wheel. "Sorry! Sorry?" Dennis repeats, voice rising. He must have used up all his calm, and now he's shouting. "You couldn't wait one night before sneaking off? Dee called me all in a panic two hours ago! I had to leave Mac alone in the hospital because you stole her keys! She was worried you went back to your place and that whoever Frank pissed off was there ready to shoot you! _I_  was worried about that!" Dennis works himself up, each word its own little exclamation, loud in the small space of the SUV. "What the fuck would we have told Mac, Charlie, if you went and got yourself killed? That's what I kept thinking, looking all over South Philly for you and then I find you washing the floor at Paddy's at four thirty in the fucking morning!" 

 

Dennis is gesturing with one hand as he shouts, the other on the steering wheel, thankfully.  Charlie would interrupt him, but he's not sure he should. He just looks out the passenger side window, frowning when everything blurs - he's crying, thinking of Mac waking up alone in the hospital because Dee couldn't go looking for him without her car keys and Dennis was out looking for him. He knows Mac hates being in the hospital - he kept saying as much when Charlie was getting ready to be released, saying he hated the noise and the people coming in and out of the room while he was trying to sleep. Charlie knew that Dennis saying he would stay the night still was the only thing keeping Mac calm about it all. Now he'll wake up alone, maybe already has, because Charlie couldn't sleep. He sniffles and wipes at his nose with his sleeve, wincing because all that makes his broken nose hurt, and only after he's done does he realize Dennis has lapsed into silence.

 

He risks a glance over at him, not bothering to hide that he's crying. Dennis is breathing hard, both hands white knuckled on the wheel. They're at a red light. Dennis doesn't look at him anyway. 

 

"I'm sorry," Charlie says for a third time. Dennis's eyes slide towards him, but his face stays looking straight ahead. Charlie keeps taking. "I just—the blood, bro. I couldn't leave it there. It's all I could think about. It's gonna set in and always be there."

 

"Jesus Christ," Dennis mutters under his breath but then the light changes so he hits the gas a little harder than he normally does. They ride in silence for a minute or two, Charlie watches them tick by on the clock. Then, Dennis says: "You don't have to worry about cleaning it up, Charlie."

 

Charlie snorts, which? ow, his nose. "I don't? Who will, Dennis? You? Dee?"

 

Dennis does look at him now, shaking his head. "I don't know, man. Not you. None of us. We'll make Frank pay for someone to clean it all up, okay?"

 

"Frank won't—" he starts to argue, but Dennis cuts him off.

 

"Frank better fucking pay for whatever we tell him he's going to pay for. He could have gotten you and Mac killed, Charlie!"

 

"Mac did die," Charlie says quietly, so quiet he's not sure Dennis hears him. But maybe he did, because he doesn't say anything else. They ride in silence, then they're pulling up in front of the apartment.

 

Dennis reaches over and unbuckles Charlie's seatbelt. "Mac is going to be fine," he says, sounding very tired. Charlie understands that feeling, but he's not sure he can trust that Mac will be fine. He just. He can't stop seeing Mac laying there on the floor, bleeding to death and choking on his own blood. 

 

"I know," he lies, instead of telling all that to Dennis, because he's not sure how much more Dennis can handle tonight - this morning?

 

Dennis looks at him for a long moment before shaking his head. "Go upstairs, man. Get some rest. Tell Dee to leave you alone, if she starts squawking at you, and that I'll call her around lunchtime."

 

Charlie thinks about arguing. Thinks about making Dennis bring him up to the hospital to see Mac instead. But he just nods and slides out the SUV. 

 

* * *

 

 When Dennis tries to sneak in his room, Mac is awake and watching him. Dennis gets a few steps in before he turns and sees Mac awake, and frowns. 

 

"Where have you been?" Mac asks, and he frowns a bit at himself, he sounds needy and upset, even to his own (admittedly pretty drugged up) ears. But Dennis said he would stay and then he was gone when Mac woke up in the middle of the night. Well. Early morning.

 

Dennis sighs at him and sinks bonelessly into the chair by the bed. Mac can move around more, so he sits up a bit better, glad to be able to move if he's careful of the IV and of course, the pain in his chest that moving brings. There's no more chest tube, oxygen, or the one that went up his dick (that one fucking sucked, he's still a bit traumatized by that), so moving is easier. It just kind of hurts.

 

Dennis is just looking at the floor for a moment, before he sighs and rubs his hands over his face. His hair is a mess, he's been running his hands through it, Mac guesses. "Fucking Charlie went AWOL on Dee. She called me to go look for him at like three in the morning. She couldn't even keep an eye on him for twelve hours!" 

 

Mac frowns at Dennis. "Where'd he go? Did you find him?" He asks, then realizes maybe the order of those questions is wrong. But he is still on a steady supply of morphine, so that's not his fault? And his chest is all tight in a way that's got nothing to do with the gunshot wound (holy shit he has a gunshot wound, his brain keeps saying every time he thinks about it), and everything to do with his worry for his friend.

 

Dennis looks at him like he doesn't want to tell Mac the truth - Mac knows what Dennis about to lie to him looks like - but then his face does the thing it does when he realizes he's going to have to tell the truth and scrunches up in disgust (Mac is never sure if that disgust is at the situation or the idea of telling the truth), and he answers: "Paddy's. He was cleaning the floor. The blood."

 

Mac feels his eyebrows try to touch each other as he thinks about what that would require, walking there (since Charlie couldn't drive without putting the car into something solid and unmoving) and then scrubbing a floor. He remembers how bad Charlie looked, walking out of the hospital room, and sighs (which, ow, no sighing for a while, Mac reminds himself when the pain falls back a bit and he can actually breathe again). Dennis is still looking at him, waiting for him to say something as Mac's brain works through the idea of Charlie trying to clean the (probably messy) bloody floor of Paddy's. "Why?" he asks, because that's really the only question on his brain.

 

Dennis looks at him like he's an idiot. It oddly makes Mac feel kind of good. If he's getting that look he must not look like he's in danger of dying anymore. After a moment, Dennis says: "Because he's losing his shit, man. He said no one else would clean it, and I told him we'd make sure Frank would pay to get it cleaned up."

 

Mac frowns. He was pretty out of it when the pulmonologist first talked to him about what had happened during his surgery, how he his heart had stopped, but Mac doesn't think he'll ever forgot the look on Charlie's face as he ran to the bathroom. Or how long it took for him to come out again, shaking and still crying a little. Of course Charlie was losing it. He didn't do good with emotional things. Mac has known since they were children that Charlie felt things much deeper than most everyone else he knew, it's like no one ever taught Charlie how to control his feelings (probably because he had no father around to tell him to man-up and stop crying like a pussy, maybe give him a smack or two to get him to stop crying, like Mac was lucky enough to have). Between getting beat up and hearing that Mac was so weak he almost died, no wonder Charlie was freaking out. "Oh," he says, since he should say something. "Shit. Is he okay?"

 

Dennis shrugs. Mac reminds himself that Dennis's indifference is usually an act, that he does give a shit about them. "I guess. I made him take that anxiety shit the doctor gave him. I bet Dee didn't, that bitch. He was crashing hard by the time I dropped him back off at our place."

 

Mac would point out that Dennis is shit at taking his own psych meds, but he doesn't want a fight. He's not sure what to say, until a yawn surprises him and all he can do for a moment is wince his way through it. Getting shot sucks. And while the morphine they keep giving him means he can actually breathe without unbearable pain, it makes him tired as shit. Mac rubs his face with his left hand (morphine or not, he can't really raise  his right arm. "I shoulda heard what was going on upstairs sooner, man," he says sadly.

 

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

 

"Charlie wouldn't be freaking out right now if he wasn't alone and beat up by that guy for so long," Mac answers. From what Mac saw, that guy was violent and scary as shit. No wonder Charlie wasn't sleeping. The dude broke Charlie's face! And then Mac almost fucking died like a weakling.

 

Dennis shakes his head at him. "You are an absolute moron." Dennis snaps at him, though he just sounds kind of (...sad?) not angry, like he usually does when he tells Mac he's a moron. "He's upset because you almost died, you fucking imbecile."

 

"Oh," Mac says, and then another yawn makes him groan when he's done. He's having trouble keeping his eyes open. He's not sure Dennis is right about that what's got Charlie upset, but he can't really argue with him right now. Morphine is a bitch.

 

Dennis rolls his eyes at him, but kind of in the nice 'why do I hang out with you' kind of way that Dennis has been doing since they were in high school together. "For fuck's sake, Mac. Go back to sleep. I'll wake you up if I have to leave again, but I won't need to leave."

 

Mac nods and closes his eyes, trying to get comfortable in the uncomfortable hospital bed. Mac always slept better on his side all curled up, but he can't sleep like that right now and it's annoying. After a moment, he says, with his eyes still closed: "Thanks for coming home, Den," because it's easier to say those kinds of things to Dennis with his eyes closed.

 

"Yeah," Dennis says, sounding kind of pleased. Then he adds in: "Of course I had to come back and help you idiots keep your shit together." Which is pretty much a declaration of love from Dennis Reynolds.

 

Mac is sure he falls asleep with a smile on his face.

 

+++


	6. Chapter 6

The police show up two days after Mac comes home from the hospital. Charlie is out of sorts, to say the least. Mac won't let him sleep on the couch, or go home to his place. He insists Charlie sleep in his bed with him because the couch will hurt him too much. And Charlie is so terrified that he's going to hurt Mac, 'cause his nightmares sometimes make him flap around, that he can't sleep. At all. So he's edging into day three without any real rest besides catnaps taken on the couch in front of the tv, in a haze from the pain meds and the anti-anxiety pills that Mac keeps making puppy eyes at him until he takes the pills too. Charlie doesn't think he needs it, that little round pill, he knows he needs the pain meds, but the anxiety one…nah. But Mac does the sad puppy face and he takes the little pill. 

 

Charlie and Mac are alone, Dee and Dennis are at the bar, because Mac was insisting that they open again. Charlie's not been back to Paddy's since he snuck there to clean. He can't handle the idea of seeing the blood again. He hopes Dennis was right, and that Frank paid to get it all cleaned. Frank is still MIA, refusing to say where exactly he is, but he's in contact. 

 

There's a knock on the door and that's scary because no one they know would knock. Dee or Dennis would walk right in. Mac starts to get off the couch to answer it, but Charlie is faster. He jumps up and nearly trips over his feet rushing to get to the door before Mac.

 

Behind him, he can hear the rustling as Mac stands up. He looks through the peep hole, sees two gray men in badly fitting suits, and Charlie's mouth goes dry, his heart tries to beat its way out of his chest.  The guy that nearly killed Mac had a similar suit. Are they his friends? Charlie's hand is on the door knob. He can't breathe, let alone turn the knob. He's not sure they can defend themselves a second time. Mac and Dennis don't have a Rat Stick. They don't have a gun here either because sometime after Pete came back in their lives, Mac made Frank take the gun they had out of the apartment, and Dennis didn't talk to Mac for a week he was so pissed. They've got no weapons and Mac is hurt. Charlie squeezes the doorknob so hard his hand aches, but he doesn't twist it yet. He's not sure he can. 

 

"Philly PD. Anyone home?" The guy in the gray suit and the gut hanging over his belt says. 

 

"Tell him to show his badge," Mac whispers, suddenly right next to him. Charlie's gasp of surprise - he didn't hear Mac coming over - makes him take in some much needed oxygen, which is probably a good thing. 

 

"Show me your badge," Charlie says, and it sounds more like a question, his voice raising into a squeak on the end, than a command. They both pull out their badges, which isn't really helpful, since Charlie knows fuck-all about what a police badge is supposed to look like. 

 

"Cool, man. Thanks," Charlie says, stalling. Why is Philly PD here? His brain is so slow, wrapped in dry shedded cat hair and that thick gloopy glue that comes in those weird glass jars. He feels like a bad high, slow but frantic. He gets that warm flush of 'I fucked up' that he always gets around the cops, but he's sure he hasn't, lately, broken any laws. 

 

Then it hits him: Mac. Mac killed someone. Oh god, they were going to send Mac to jail!

 

He turns, and pushes - gently but urgently - on Mac's left shoulder, pointing to Dennis's room. Mac doesn't move. Charlie makes his fingers do the walking motion, puts one to his lips in the hush gesture everyone knows. Mac is looking at him funny, like he's gone crazy, but he's also very pale, sloping eyes very round with sudden, understanding fear. Charlie nudges him again, as the other dude outside says: "We'd like to come inside."

 

"Uh. Sure. Gimme a minute, dude. I've got no pants on." Charlie calls through the door, voice still high and stressed. 

 

Mac isn't moving. Charlie turns Mac around, again all by the left side, all gentle, and gives him a shove to the back. Mac hisses and Charlie gets a tight twinge in his gut (he's an asshole that hurts his friends) but then Mac is going into Dennis's room and closing the door most of the way - he can't close it all he way or he won't be able to hear what they say thanks to the sound proofing Dennis did to his room for a reason Charlie doesn't want to think about. 

 

He pops the fly on his jeans and then opens the door, to sell the lie, looking up at the two cops - of course they had to be tall. "Sorry," he says, his voice less weird, as he looks down at his fly and tries to close it with his one hand. It's hard to do. He should have stuck to sweat pants. But he felt weirdly itchy in them, like his skin was stretched just a little too tight. 

 

The cops look at him struggling to try and button his jeans, but don't say anything. Cool. He wasn't sure he'd handle it good if they tried to help. He barely handled it good when Mac did. "Who are you?" The one grayer one asks, still standing at the doorway not coming in.

 

Charlie frowns up at them. Kinda rude, knocking on the door and asking questions. He really doesn't like cops. Already, the small of his back is all damp, he hates feeling like he is guilty of something, even when he knows he isn't.

 

"I'm Charlie. Who are you?" He asks right back. He has questions too! 

 

The grayer man raises his eyebrow and looks down at his open notebook in his hand. "Charles Kelly?" He asked, which annoying.  Charlie hates to be called Charles. 

 

"Yeah. I'm Charlie Kelly," he can't leave it there, without asking his own question. "What do you want?" He asks and feels like a teenaged punk again, thirteen and pissed that he was the one that got caught shoplifting  beer, 'cause Mac was taller and had easily out ran him because of his longer legs, snapping questions right back at the cop then ('who wants to know?' that kind of pissy, teenage nonsense) because he was thirteen and angry at everything. 

 

"You were with Mr. Ronald McDonald on the night of August fifteenth?" The other guy, in the black suit asks. All Charlie can use to tell them apart are their clothes, they've both got this regular old guy look to them.

 

Charlie nods, thinking that's the night the guy broke in to Paddy's. He's never been great with dates. He can't think of another day that would be so important to the cops, doesn't think any scheme was police attention worthy. 

 

The man looks up at him, his partner is doing a slow walk around the room, looking around, checking out stuff on the walls and table. Charlie doesn't like that. 

 

"Mac's sleeping," he blurts out, because the guy is getting closer to Dennis's room, near about to find Mac anyway. He hopes Mac has enough sense to get on the bed and pretend. Instead, the door to Dennis's room opens and Mac shuffles out. Because he is an idiot and doesn't listen to suggestions. 

 

"What's going on, Charlie?" He asks, and normally Mac is a shit actor, but he actually even stretches a little, until he winces and puts his arms back down, left hand rubbing absently around the place in his chest that had a hole. Fuck. Charlie glares at him.

 

"We're here to talk to you about what happened on August fifteenth."  The grayer cop supplies, and Charlie sinks down to sit on the couch, not sure he can stay standing. 

 

They're going to arrest Mac! Charlie is sure of it. Cops don't care about White Trash people. They only know that Mac is White Trash, and that his father is a felon that eats people. 

 

They should have ran to wherever Frank is.

 

* * *

 

 Mac is in shock when the cops actually leave. He thought for sure he was going to go to jail. He knows he might, still. But the fact that they talked to them here, rather than down at the police station had to be a good thing, right? 

 

Mac looks over at Charlie, who's slumped in the corner of the couch, picking at the edge of his cast. Mac wants to tell him to stop that. Wants to shout at him for not sleeping, for going to Paddy's the first night he was out of the hospital to clean up, for not taking the anxiety meds most of the time even though it's clear to anyone with _eyes_  that Charlie is messed up over what happened…Wants to yell at him for a hundred other things, not all of which are Charlie's fault. So he doesn't say anything, unsure if he can talk without yelling about things Charlie can't really help. 

 

Charlie talks first: "Do you think they're gonna arrest you?" His voice is oddly quiet for Charlie. Quiet and scared. Mac isn't sure if he prefers that to the frantic, loud Charlie who didn't even seem to realize he was crying while desperately telling Mac to stay awake while Mac was too busy bleeding out on the floor of Paddy's to listen to his friend. He'd rather neither version, if he's being honest with himself.

 

Mac looks away, down at the floor between his bare feet. Thinks about the question. But he doesn't really get too far on the idea. Because for the first time, it's hitting Mac: he killed someone. He processed the idea that he had almost died, did die for a minute or so during surgery, had time to think on that one, but he never bothered to think about the fact that a man was dead because of him.

 

"Fuck," Mac says, and runs his shaking hands through his hair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees because he can't even lift his right arm up that high yet. He digs his nails into his scalp.

 

"I'm sure they won't arrest you," Charlie is saying, and he's not the best of liars. But he thinks that's what Mac is messed up about, so that's what he's going to say. Mac loves him for it, a bit.

 

The only sound in the silence is his rapid breathing, for a few moments. Then Charlie is sliding across the leather couch and carefully putting his arm around Mac's shoulders (everything Charlie does around him is careful now, like he's afraid of Mac being glass even though Charlie's a mess with his panda eyes from his broken nose and his arm in a cast and broken ribs and that painful, looking swollen shut eye, Mac's only got the one tender spot, but Charlie won't stop acting like Mac will shatter if he _breathes_  on him too hard). Mac leans into him, his head resting against Charlie's. Charlie is quietly saying comforting things like 'you'll be fine' and 'dude had a gun' even though he doesn't know what Mac is freaking about, it is kind of nice.

 

After Charlie runs out of words, Mac sits up straighter, so his head isn't resting on Charlie's, but he doesn't pull away fully. He doesn't want to.  Charlie doesn't pull away from him either. Which is reassuring - maybe Charlie needs him just as much, still. That's how it was when they were kids. Tiny, dirty, weird little Charlie needed the bigger, louder, bravado-fueled Ronnie with the scary father to protect Charlie from the other kids. Lonely, sad little Ronnie needed the fiercely loyal and accepting Charlie. Charlie never judged him when he was a kid, and Mac always made it clear that to pick a fight with Charlie was to pick a fight with him too - it led to a lot of lost fights on their part, but they were together, a united front against the rest of their neighborhood. It kind of feels like it's him and Charlie against the world, and that's honestly a comfort right now, knowing someone has his back despite the fact that he killed someone and could be going to jail for the rest of his life. 

 

Fuck! He's going to go to jail for the rest of his life because he fucking straight up _killed_  someone. A weird little gasping, dry sob leaves his mouth, and he rocks forward to lean his head on his shaking hands again. 

 

"Hey, man, you want one of those anxiety pills?" Charlie offers. His voice is still unusually quiet.

 

Mac is tempted to say yes. He doesn't. "Nah. I'll be okay."

 

"You sure, man? You're shaking."

 

Mac only realizes now that it's not only his hands that are trembling. All of him is shaking. Shit. "I'm good." He insists.

 

Charlie snorts. Gives a little grunt of pain because he's not bright and forgot that he's got a broken nose. This is why Charlie wasn't allowed to go home alone. Why the three of them decided against it. Charlie needs supervision. That, and Mac is glad to have Charlie there. 

 

"You're so far from good, dude." Charlie says sounding genuinely sad about it.

 

Mac laughs, and it's a sad sound. He looks over at Charlie, propping his head up on his left hand. "I'll be okay, man. I just….I didn't really think about how I killed that guy until now."

 

Charlie frowns at him and nods, like he thinks he has to show he's listening, but doesn't have anything to say. They sit like that for a few more minutes before Charlie suddenly stands up.  "We need beer."

 

"We're not supposed to drink on pain meds," Mac says, but he takes the beer from Charlie when he's offered it (one beer won't hurt, he figures). 

 

Charlie sits next to him again, and turns the TV back on. They find some action movie Mac knows he's probably seen a hundred times but can't think of the name of it, and eventually, Mac finds his shaking has stopped.

 

Charlie always was good at figuring out what Mac needed, even if Mac himself often didn't know. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Charlie wakes up to the feeling of something warm pouring over head. He twitches awake more, cursing under his breath as he tries to figure out what is happening.  His ribs absolutely scream in protest as he sits up from where he was slumped down on the couch, feet on the coffee table. It takes a moment, but he manages to get his feet on the floor and turn to look at Mac. Mac is slower to wake, his left arm still stretched over the back of the couch, and the offending beer bottle which Mac managed to pour down the back of the couch right onto Charlie is empty and pointing downward. 

 

It's dark outside and the tv is still on quietly, Charlie realizes, unsure exactly what time it is. Mac seems to slowly understand what he's done - Mac was never the best at waking up - and has the kindness to look guilty. "Shit, dude," he says, shifting forward to put the bottle on the coffee table and run his hand over his face. His right arm is still curled up protectively under his chest - Charlie wonders how much longer Mac will be moving like that, if it will just be a thing now, or if it's a reaction to pain and he'll stop as he heals more. 

 

"You just poured beer on my head," Charlie says, kind of uselessly, since they've both figured it out but he's not much better than Mac at waking up on a good day, and he hasn't been sleeping more than few naps here or there.

 

Mac laughs a little, unable to help himself, Charlie can see he is trying to hold it in, and Charlie is just so glad that Mac is laughing, that he can laugh without looking too pained physically, or at all considering he was just freaking out about killing someone and going to jail for it hours earlier, that he laughs back. He runs a hand over his hair and yup. That bottle must have been mostly full. He goes to settle back into the couch and Mac grabs his arm.

 

"No. No! You're not just sitting around here with beer in your hair, Charlie. That's gross. Go take a shower, man."

 

Charlie frowns. They've been making him take a lot more showers than he's used to. He doesn't mind it too much, the hot water is kind of soothing, as long as it doesn't hit any bruises directly, but he's also wearing a cast. He tells Mac as much by saying: "Aw, man. Then I have to wrap up my cast and that's a pain the ass, dude. It's hard for me to do."

 

Mac rolls his eyes at him. "You are not sleeping in my bed without washing, Charlie. I'll help you - you just have to put a bag on it, right?" 

 

Charlie nods and realizes he's not winning this fight. "Fuckin' fine, man."  He grumbles, but really, there's beer running down the back of his neck and he probably should wash that off. In the shower will be easier - much less movement that way - he won't have to twist himself up to clean off the beer he can just stand under the water.

 

He kicks off his shoes, and goes to the chair he's got all his clothes piled on - Dennis had bitched about it, 'just make a mess in our living room, Charlie, it's cool' but he hadn't really done anything to make Charlie clean it up, either - and grabs himself a clean t-shirt and sweatpants before going into the bathroom. Dee left the garbage bags and duct tape on the back of the toilet and Charlie nods his head towards them. Mac sits down on the closed toilet seat. When Dee helped him, he let her put the bag on while he had his shirt on - he didn't need her getting any crazy sex ideas while he was broken and vulnerable, thank you - but it was a bitch fighting just one handed to get his shirt off over the taped up bag. 

 

"It's easier," he says as an explanation as he starts to work his t-shirt off. It's drenched in the back and they must have been asleep for a while, dragged down by the combination of what turned out to be six beers for him and five (and the quarter he managed to drink before dumping it on Charlie's head) for Mac, stress and pain meds they weren't supposed to drink on. They're both probably due for some pain meds, everything kind of hurts and Charlie can't get his arms up very high without wincing. He really shouldn't have slept in the position he was in, all hunched down and slumped. 

 

Mac sighs. "Dude. Let me help you," Mac says, sounding kind of annoyed.

 

Charlie looks up from where he is hunched forward, the shirt stuck on the back of his head and shakes his head once.

 

"Charlie. I can lift my left arm higher than you can lift either of yours up, don't be an idiot. Let me help." Mac's voice is all tight with concern and frustration - Mac is the only person Charlie really pulls that combination from - and he's got the puppy eyes going. 

 

Charlie sighs, which, ow, mistake, and nods, shuffling forward towards Mac. Mac stands and easily pulls Charlie's shirt the rest of the way over his head, and carefully helps him work it off his arms. There's sudden silence, and Charlie frowns, looking up at Mac, who's eyes are definitely all sad now, and more like those commercial puppies in cages than before. Shit.

 

"Damn, Charlie," Mac says, eyes on Charlie's torso. Charlie frowns, and looks down. Okay, there are a lot of bruises running a whole bunch of colors from fading black to green, the worst of it concentrated over the parts where he knew his ribs were broken because he could feel the pain worse there.

 

"It's not that bad," Charlie says even though it kind of hurts and they're the worst bruises he's ever had.

 

"Fuck, man," Mac says, voice surprisingly shaky. "You look worse than when I fell down the stairs in ninth grade."

 

Maybe the remains of the mix of Percocet and Coors are what loosens Charlie's tongue, because he says the dumbest thing he can: "Mac, man, you don't have to pretend. I know you didn't fall down the stairs that time." 

 

Mac is in middle of twisting to pick up the box of garbage bags, but he turns back around to look at Charlie with an unreadable look on his face. He's completely shut up, like he always is when they talk about shit like this. Charlie holds his gaze, though he really wants to look away. He wants to take the words back, to keep letting Mac live this one last delusion a little more, but he's said them and maybe it's time they talk about it rather than pretend Charlie doesn't really know what happened like they have for the past however many decades. It could still be good for Mac to get this shit off his chest.

 

"What do you mean?" Mac asks, his voice high and defensive. The voice he always uses when talking about his father, even if Mac doesn't realize it. "It happened."

 

Charlie sighs, feeling a little absurd having this conversation half dressed in a bathroom. Whatever. "Bro. You told me the truth, like, that summer. You got super drunk and told me Luther found you cranking one out to, like, your mom's Playgirl and beat the piss out of you." He can hardly keep his hatred for Luther out of his voice. He's always held back his real feelings on Luther, and how fucked up it was that Mac was so damn desperate for his father's love, because well, it's _Mac_  and Charlie never wanted to hurt his feelings that bad. Even as kids, Charlie recognized that Mac seemed to get through the day by actively denying reality. Charlie didn't fault him for it, doesn't still, 'cause he did the same, just with inhalants and booze or whatever drugs he could get his hands on. 

 

Mac's face goes pale. He sits down on the closed toilet. For a long time, he's silent. Charlie stands there, feeling weirdly way too sober for this, but he's already opened his damn mouth.

 

"I told you that?" Mac asks, after a moment.

 

Charlie nods. "Yeah, bro. Like I said. You were very drunk. You didn't remember telling me, so I just, like, let it go?" He gives a shallow shrug. "I dunno. You seemed to want to keep up with the idea that Luther wasn't fucking awful to you." He still does want to keep that up, sadly. 

 

"He wasn't awful to me, Charlie," Mac denies, but he doesn't even look Charlie in the face when he says it. Like he knows he's lying to the both of them.

 

Something in Charlie breaks. He swears he can feel it, the dam on his feelings about Luther Goddamn McDonald that he's held back for, like, decades! He thinks of all the lies he's heard Mac tell himself about his shitty father, thinks of all the times he's sat next to him in that fucking prison to help Mac with whatever he was trying to get out of meeting with Luther (nothing ever good ever came of any of it, ever!), of how many times he thought for sure Luther was going to kill them, and how the prick walked out when Mac tried to come out to him (Frank told him that story a few times and when Frank fucking Reynolds is a better father than someone, that says a lot, doesn't it?).  The dam breaks open and Charlie finds himself actually yelling:

 

"Are you fucking kidding me, man? Not that that awful!?" Mac looks up at him with wide eyes, but Charlie's started and he can't stop even though his voice has gone all high and squeaky like it does when he's really upset. "He put you in the fucking hospital, Mac! All he's done to you your whole life is hurt you and lie to you and not fucking love you like a father is supposed to—"

 

"What the fuck do you know about how a father is supposed to act, Charlie? You've never had one!" Mac shouts, cutting him off, shooting to his feet.  

 

There it is. The anger - the anger that Mac didn't carry around with him like a shield until ninth grade, when Luther went from just being neglectful to downright abusive. Charlie glares right up at him, chest so tight he can hardly breathe in, and says: "I know they're not supposed to hurt you, man."

 

Mac looks away from him, but doesn't back down. He looks broken. Charlie thinks about the night Mac told him the truth (a truth Charlie already suspected, if he was honest with himself), how hard Mac had cried and said he didn't want to fail his father 'by being a fag'. How scary all of Luther's interactions with Mac were in high school. Charlie was there once when Mac had mouthed off, answered Luther the wrong way as they were walking past the man in the upstairs hallway and Luther straight up shoved Mac into the wall so hard that Mac's head cracked the drywall. They both had ran from the house then, stole some 40s and didn't ever talk about it. Father around or not, Charlie knew parents weren't supposed to put their kids through the wall! And that one was one time when Charlie was there. Who knew how many other times there were!

 

Maybe it's that memory, or the memory of Mac's drunken tears confessing he didn't fall down the stairs that loosens his tongue a bit too much, because he keeps talking about it, even though he should just continue on biting his tongue as he has been for decades. "I thought he was gonna kill you before you made it out of high school, Mac. Or you were gonna off yourself. And then he started cooking meth and don't tell me he wasn't smoking it too, I know what a fucking meth head looks like! He started carrying a gun around all the time and I was so sure he was going to fucking shoot you one day," Charlie winces at that, because yeah. Shot Mac and all.

 

"He wouldn't have shot me," Mac denies again, but he's not looking at Charlie still. 

 

"Mac. He was going to kill you. It's why I called the co—" Charlie's brain catches up to his mouth and he clamps his mouth shut. But it's too late. 

 

Mac stares at him for a long moment, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Very quietly, he asks: "Did you rat my dad out to the cops?"

 

"He was going to kill you!" Charlie says, flinging his arms out to the side even though it hurts to do that. "You were bruised up all the time, dude, and he had that gun and—"

 

Mac moves way quicker than Charlie thought he would for a dude that just got shot, but then again, it's a small bathroom. He shoves Charlie back against the wall, winding him. Mac's got his left arm across Charlie's neck. Mac doesn't press down, Charlie could breathe fine if he wasn't so worked up, but there's a threat implied in the pure anger on Mac's face. 

 

"Did you rat my dad out to the cops, Charlie?" Mac asks again, like he can't believe Charlie's answer the first time. His voice is all tight, face hard with rage.

 

Charlie nods his head, just slightly, like he can't fully say yes, even though he did. He followed Luther one day to the meth lab and called the cops from a pay phone. Charlie's eyes sting, like he's going to cry, but he swallows the tears back. He planned on dying with this secret, and now it's out there, and he's sort of glad, but he's also certain that Mac will never talk to him again.

 

"You—" Mac starts, then closes his eyes and swallows hard, like he's on the verge of tears himself - maybe he is. Charlie's not really seen Mac cry all that much since high school. When he opens his eyes, though, they're dry and full of anger. "You ruined my _life_!" Mac doesn't shout it, that would be less scary. No, he says it all tight and angry in a hiss.

 

"You'd be dead if I-" Charlie doesn't get to finish his sentence, because Mac pulls back and punches him in his eye that was just starting to open up again after being swollen shut. Charlie's head hits the wall behind him hard enough that he's not sure if the stars he sees are from his face or his head hitting the wall. His legs cut out on him, just stop doing their job at being legs, and he slides down the wall, tilting sideways. He catches himself with his casted arm and the jolt that goes through him when he hits the ground makes him make an awful little sound of pain.

 

He looks up at Mac, expecting a kick in the gut or something more, figures he _deserves_  more, but Mac is bent over, left hand pressed to where he was shot because the idiot hit him with his right hand and that had to pull on his wound. Mac makes a weird wheezing sound, like he has to breathe but really doesn't want to, and sinks to his knees. The bathroom is small, so small that Mac's knees are pressed up against Charlie's legs. Charlie doesn't flinch away, but he's not sure Mac is done with hurting him - he deserves more. He knows he does.

 

Forever passes in between them, as Charlie tries to get himself seeing straight again. It's not working. He closes his almost open eye and presses his hand to it, like that will help with the stabbing pain shooting through his face. He must make a sound of pain, because Mac looks at him, and Mac's eyes are wet because, _fuck_ , Mac is crying, and Charlie's hand is wet, so he must be crying too. Damnit. 

 

"Everything went to shit when my dad went to jail. And you sent him there," Mac says, voice shaky. 

 

Charlie forces himself to sit up better, leaning over is killing his ribs - though sitting up pulls on them and almost makes him cry out, but he holds it in. Sitting up brings them closer together, puts him in striking position again, but he can't be half laying on the floor. "Things were pretty shitty when he was around, man. Don't lie to me and tell me they weren't. I was there." He doesn't want to push the issue, but the truth is out, he can't lie or listen to Mac lie to himself about it all anymore. He just _can't_. "You were a mess, Mac. I thought you were gonna off yourself if he didn't kill you first," Charlie admits. He really had been so certain that Mac wouldn't live to graduate high school with Luther around.

 

Mac looks up at him, looks like he's gonna hit him again for one long moment. Then Mac's face crumples and he's really crying. Sobbing. It's gotta hurt, Charlie thinks. He reaches out, puts a hand on Mac's shoulder. When he's not attacked for it, he actually hugs Mac, lets the other man rest his face on his bare shoulder and cry. Charlie's shoulder gets all wet and slimy from Mac's tears and snot, but that's okay, Charlie doesn't mind slimy things.

 

Again, he's not sure how much time passes. Enough for Mac to cry out his tears, which is alright. Charlie's stiffening up again, the punch and the fall are making him ache, but Mac was crying and deserved a shoulder to lean on as he did, so he can't complain. Mac only pulls away when there's a knock on the bathroom door, scaring the shit out of the both of them.

 

Mac looks at Charlie wide-eyed and sad, when Dennis calls through the door "Are you _both_  in there?" Sounding all scandalized. 

 

Mac scrubs at his face, trying to make himself look like he hasn't been crying for however long it's been. Charlie realizes Mac doesn't plan on answering Dennis, so he does, after clearing his throat. "Mac poured beer on my head. He's helping me put a bag on my cast so I can take a shower," Charlie answers, voice rougher than he'd like, but not that much of a surprise, considering. 

 

Dennis sighs. "You're not supposed to drink beer on Percocet you idiots," he mumbles under his breath, but then they can hear him walking away from the door, so that's good. Charlie wasn't sure what would happen if Dennis came in and saw them on the floor, Charlie half dressed with Mac all red-eyed.

 

Mac gives him a sad little smile, grateful, Charlie thinks, too. He uses the closed toilet seat to steady himself as he stands up, then offers Charlie a hand up. Charlie doesn't take it, looks at Mac like he's insane for offering, because that's going to pull on his chest and he's certain Mac's chest is aching after the punch and all that sobbing, but he's kind of happy too, that Mac offered to help him up. He can't hate him too much, if he offered to help him stand up, right?

 

Charlie gets to his feet, and Mac silently picks up the bags and tape. Charlie wants to ask if they're good. He really does. But he can't get his mouth to form the words, too afraid to hear that Mac will never talk to him again. So he doesn't ask. Not until Mac is done taping the bag to his arm above the cast, and the other man is about to leave the room. Then, Charlie forces himself to ask "Mac?" unable to say more than that, to voice the question he's afraid to hear the answer to, but also unable to _not_ ask.

 

Mac turns away from the door to look at him. His eyes are red and swollen from crying. He looks tired and sad. Charlie hasn't seen him look this devastated since the night Dennis left for North Coda. Mac gives him the same look he did that night, though this time Charlie knows he's the cause of it, and that makes something weird twist in his chest and drop to hover low in his guts, makes Charlie hate himself more than he thought he ever could. More than when he thought Mac was _dead_  because of him.

 

"Don't," Mac says, and Charlie's not sure what he's not supposed to do.  Ask if they're okay? Ask if Mac's okay? Talk at all? There's so many things he shouldn't be doing right now, he figures. Charlie needs Mac to tell him what he wants from him. Charlie would do it. No problem. But he needs to know what that is, what Mac needs.

 

Mac doesn't. He just stands there a moment longer, not quite looking at Charlie, looking so sad that he reminds Charlie of the Pound Puppy he had as a kid, the brown one with dark brown spots, that he saw in a toy store window and begged his mother for, despite the fact that he was nine and shouldn't want stuffed dolls anymore because the stuffed puppy had sad droopy eyes just like his best friend. She bought it for him, even though it meant they only had crackers and ketchup for dinner that night, scavenged from the food court condiment stand and Charlie thought it was so worth the stomach ache he went to bed with.  Mac had laughed and teased him when he saw the Pound Puppy on his bed one day, but Charlie loved that stupid thing and slept with it every night. It reminded him so much of Mac he secretly named the puppy Donald 'cause it sounded like Ronald but wasn't really Mac's name, so Mac couldn't get angry if he ever found out the puppy's name, but Charlie knew who it was secretly named after. He took that stupid dog everywhere for almost a year, until Charlie did Something Bad to make Uncle Jack really mad (Charlie can't remember what he did, he doesn't think he wants to remember what he did, but he thinks it had to do with biting), and Uncle Jack used his scary Boy Scout knife to cut its head off...Charlie knows this is not what he should be thinking about, but the thoughts race through his head like thoughts always do, Charlie can't help it. So he thinks about that stupid Pound Puppy named Donald and not how Mac hates him.

 

And then Mac shakes his head silently and goes out the door, leaving Charlie alone.

 

+++

 

Mac leaves Charlie in the bathroom to take his damn shower. His hands are shaking, he's sure Charlie saw as much, but Charlie didn't say anything. Didn't say a word about that as Mac taped the bag over his cast for him. The knuckles on his right hand are starting to bruise up, but none of his knuckles are broken (Mac kinda knows that thanks to past experience hitting things like a drunken dumbass) and Mac hopes against hope that Dennis doesn't notice.

 

Speaking of. Dennis is in the living room when Mac comes out of the bathroom. Mac doesn't say a word, just walks past him to the kitchen to where his pills are on the counter. Fuck, more than just his hands are shaking. Everything is shaking and he hates his body just that much more for betraying him like this, showing weakness so obviously. He grabs the pill bottle and pops the top open, dry swallowing two.

 

"Mac?" Dennis asks, voice surprisingly soft.

 

Mac ignores him and throws open the freezer, grabbing the bottle in there (who thought cinnamon whiskey was a good idea? Fireball? What are they, high school freshman?) and taking a good ten second swig from the bottle. It would be more, but Dennis is suddenly all up in his space, ripping the bottle away from his face, clinking it against his teeth in the process.

 

Mac glares at him, and feels to make sure Dennis didn't just knock a tooth out, because well, he's kind of numb everywhere and he's not sure if he'd have felt it if Dennis did crack one of his teeth. He's not sure when he went numb, but he is. He can't feel his body at all.

 

"What the fuck is going on?" Dennis asks, then, frowning adds: "Have you been crying?"

 

His throat is burning from the Fireball. His eyes are burning from fucking Charlie. He's not sure which he hates more at the moment. He glares at the floor because he's not mad at Dennis, but he's not sure he can talk about what Charlie just told him, either. He's not sure he can _think_  about that without going back in the bathroom and strangling the smaller man. Charlie ratted his dad out. Fuck. Instead of wrapping his hands around Charlie's neck, he leans back against the kitchen counter and grips it tight, white knuckled (except for the red spots that are turning blue). 

 

Instead, of going in the bathroom to kick Charlie's ass, he asks Dennis: "Did you know I didn't really fall down the stairs in ninth grade?"

 

He hasn't looked up from the floor, but he can see Dennis twitching with surprise out the corner of his eye. Dennis doesn't answer him, not for a while, which is probably his answer there, but when the silence gets too big, feels like it's going to swell up and swallow him like Jonah got swallowed by the whale, he says, quietly: "Den," which is cheating because he knows it's all he has to say to loosen Dennis's tongue right now. No need for puppy dog eyes when you've been shot. And are maybe having a nervous breakdown in slow motion, but Dennis doesn't know that part, so all Mac can do is use the nickname and hope that is enough on top of the whole 'I got shot' thing. 

 

"Yeah. I knew that." Dennis says, just as quietly. Which, fuck him! Mac wants shouting and sound and something besides softness, he's not sure why.  So Mac doesn't say anything, as a petty little punishment, but that just makes Dennis talk more saying: "No one gets a black eye from falling down the stairs, man."

 

Shit. Mac looks up and takes the whiskey from him, taking another sip, kind of mad when Dennis doesn't stop him, kind of glad his glare is working. He wonders what Dennis would give him, how far he could push right now (which is a very Dennis thought, Mac realizes), using the combined sympathy from his admission and the fact that everyone has been walking on egg shells around him since he got shot. The thought to push is gone as quick as it came. He just doesn't have the energy to do it. 

 

Instead, he slinks over to the couch and flops down, wincing more for show than in any actual pain as he jars his chest. It should hurt, but it doesn't right now. Dennis is watching him, a strange look on his face. Worried. Mac tries to remember when the last time Dennis looked this worried for him and can't. As it turns out, almost dying makes people realize they give a shit about you. Or Dennis is on his medication this week. Mac thinks it's the first one more than the second, but he can't be sure. He feels guilty for even trying to figure it out, but he's feels so unmoored at the moment that he wants to be vindictive and petty. 

 

"Dude. You're freaking me out a little here," Dennis says, coming to sit on the coffee table in front of him while Mac slouches and drinks more (disgusting) whiskey in response to his words.

 

Dennis pulls the bottle away from him a second time, when he takes a break to breathe. Some of it slides down his chin, he wipes at it absently. "I, uh…" He starts, but stops himself. He doesn't know if he can say what Charlie just told him. If he says it, it's real. "The cops were here," Mac says instead. "'Cause I killed that guy." 

 

Dennis looks confused by the subject change, how he got from falling down the stairs, or not, really falling down the stairs as a freshman, to this. But he goes with it, nodding. "Yeah? What did they have to say?"

 

Mac shrugs. The booze is working its way up from his stomach, warming him from the inside out. Might be Fireball's one redeeming quality right there. If the Percocet could kick in, he'd be golden. "I dunno. Not much. I don't think they'll arrest me?" He doesn't mean for it to come out as a question, but it does.

 

Dennis shakes his head. "Nah. It was self-defense. Friend defense. Whatever. You were defending Charlie's life." 

 

Fucking Charlie. Bigger rat than he ever was. Mac doesn't say that. Instead, he argues: "I've got a record." 

 

Dennis makes a pffff sound. "Most of that was stupid kid shit. You've never spent more than a night in jail, man. It'll be fine. You didn't even mean to kill the guy."

 

Mac nods. He's feeling boneless now, like someone pulled them all out when he was on the floor crying into Charlie's shoulder. He rubs the heels of his hands into both his eyes. "I guess. But. Cops, man. I'm white trash. They don't give a shit about trash." He says, hands over his eyes still, like that's easier. It's not. 

 

"No you're not whi—" Mac drops his hands to raise an eyebrow at Dennis who has called him white trash plenty of times more than Mac has called himself white trash. "Okay. Fine. You're white trash, but you're also a fucking business owner defending his friend and property. If they arrest you, me, Charlie and Dee will make such a stink to the press that they'll drop the charges. And Frank will pay for whoever the Philly Johnny Cochrane is. A real lawyer, not fucking Jack. But they're not going to arrest you." 

 

Dennis seems so sure of it. It's a comfort, and Mac feels a bit calmer about it thanks to that. "I guess," he says, because he knows Dennis well enough to know he won't let it go until Mac is equally convinced as he is. It's just how Dennis is. How he is, too. They're both stubborn to a fault. 

 

Mac lets his head rest on the back of the couch with a sigh. Dennis looks at him, just stares at him for a minute longer and then asks: "Why were you asking me about ninth grade?" 

 

Fuck. God damn it. Why is Dennis paying him more attention now than he had in the last fucking year? Oh, right: shot. Mac sighs and closes his eyes. Like if they're closed when he says this, it's less of a truth? "I said Charlie looked worse than when I fell down the stairs in ninth grade and he told me he knew I didn't fall down the stairs that time."

 

"How did he know?" Implying Charlie wasn't perceptive enough to notice Mac's injuries weren't exactly the fell down the stairs type. Which, fair call.

 

"I got drunk that summer and told him the truth."

 

"Which was?" Dennis prompts, which is fucking annoying as all fuck.

 

"You figured it out," Mac says, not sure if he can say it - it's one thing to hear he told the story to Charlie while black out drunk, but it's a whole other thing to tell the story while mostly sober. Even if it's been close to three decades ago, Mac still remembers that night, hates himself for the fear that burns up him if he thinks too long on it. 

 

"I figured," Dennis says, then pauses long enough that Mac opens his eyes to look at him. "I figured," he continues when he's got Mac's full attention. "You pissed Luther off. 'Cause if you were jumped by someone at school, you would have just told us the truth. But you were lying about it. Badly. You're an awful liar, man."

 

Mac sighs and nods, dropping his head back down to the back of the couch. "So I've been told." He mutters, then decides fuck it, he's out of the closet already and adds: "He caught me jerking off to something kinda gay and didn't like it very much."  Which, understatement of the year.

 

"Jesus Christ! I thought you like stole some of his drugs or something! Beating you so bad because you're gay? Fuck!" Dennis actually looks genuinely angry. It's kind of touching. Kind of scary. He's got two bright spots of color on his cheeks, the rest of him pale. Mac tries to remember the last time he saw Dennis this angry and can't. Not even seeing his torched Range Rover made him this mad. 

 

Mac reaches for the Fireball. Dennis gives it to him without an argument. Mac takes a long drink, with his stupid shaky hands, then hands it back and watches Dennis mirror him - shaking hands and all. They sit in silence for a long moment, so long that Mac is starting to get that weird tingle in his gut that tells him the painkillers are kicking in. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, and doesn't look at Dennis at all. Lets him silently seethe in his rage.

 

"No fuckin' wonder it took you forty years to get your ass out of the closet if that's how Luther treated you," Dennis says, voice strangely hoarse, breaking the silence. 

 

Mac huffs a not very amused sounding laugh up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Well…I had to work through some things," which is always his answer when anyone asks what the fuck took so long. 

 

"I want to kill him," Dennis confesses. Sounds like he means it too.

 

Mac gives another bitter little laugh and sighs. All his bones are gone, for sure. "Don't worry. He's in jail 'cause Charlie fucking ratted him out to the cops. So, I guess that's my revenge." 

 

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dennis asks. 

 

"Charlie just told me he ratted my father out to the cops for cookin' meth when we were in high school." Mac explains. He's not sure how Dennis will react. He's pretty sure that Dennis's reaction could tip his own feelings in any direction right now, and Mac just doesn't have the energy to react more than he had already. 

 

"Oh…damn. I didn't know he had that in him." Dennis sounds genuinely impressed with Charlie's choice. Mac looks at him. Dennis just returns the look evenly, and swigs from the whiskey. He won't hand it over when Mac reaches for it, though, the dick. "He probably saved your life, bro."

 

"Yeah. That's what he thinks too." Mac tries not to sound bitter about that, he really does. He's not sure he's successful, but given the day he's had, and the one two punch of Fireball and Percocet, he's allowed to be a bit bitter and tired sounding. 

 

Dennis sighs loudly and says: "Charlie's not as dumb as he looks." Which may be one of the nicest things Dennis has ever said about Charlie. 

 

Mac absently hums his agreement, and he's not sure when, but his eyes have slipped closed on him. Dennis kicks him in his shin, lightly (every touch is light from every-fucking-one, Mac thinks irritably). "Don't sleep like that, man. You'll be miserable in the morning," Dennis says, prodding him more when Mac whines wordlessly in response.

 

Somehow, Dennis gets him up and shuffling towards his room. Mac manages to get out of his pants, but that's as far as he gets before he collapses down onto the bed. He realizes the door to his room is half open, Dennis is watching him to make sure he's getting settled. With that kind of babysitting, no wonder Charlie tried to run away the first night he was out of the hospital. He doesn't say that, he'd be a douche to. Instead, he mumbles to Dennis: "Night, dude. Make sure Charlie doesn't try to sleep on the couch."

 

He's asleep before Dennis responds. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Charlie takes the longest shower of his life. He doesn't want to get out and see Mac's sad Pound Puppy eyes. He doesn't want Mac to tell him to get out and go home. Charlie's not afraid there's someone hiding there to shoot him. He doesn't care about that. He's worried that _Mac_  doesn't care if there is someone there to kill him. So he washes the beer out of his hair and then he sits on the floor of the shower and lets himself cry for a bit. He has to do that sometimes, or it will all build up and build up and then make things get all scrambled in his head and he'll scream and scream until his voice goes even funnier than it already is. So he sits in the shower because he doesn't have it in him to stand.

 

He sits in the shower and cries and he loses track of time because time is weird and dumb and stretchy like a rubber band - sometimes it stretches and stretches on and on and then goes back to normal, but other times it stretches and then snaps and it's like 'boom! back to normal bitches, even though you're broken!' or is that...is that time or his thoughts? Maybe they're both.

 

Charlie realizes he's breathing funny, too quick and not holding any air in his lungs, right around the time he realizes that the water has gone cold, colder than the water in the soda gun he fires at his armpits and crotch every Friday morning for his weekly bar wash - he likes firing the stream of water by pressing the button, but sometimes he winds up washing himself with soda, which is sticky but smells good – and  his teeth are slamming together like they don't know they could break doing that.

 

He has to get up. He shifts to his knees, and every bit of him is screaming in agony, it feels like. Which is okay. He deserves the pain for stressing Mac out while he's trying to get better from being shot, for what he did to make Mac hurt, by ratting out Luther...for so many many many things. Still. He can't totally hold in the groan of pain that leaves his mouth as he struggles to get himself to his feet in the shower - his teeth keep opening and shutting on their own and that lets the sound out. Charlie is good, normally, at keeping the pain sounds in, but his body isn't listening to him.

 

Charlie figures his body is mad at him, has a right to be mad at him, given the punch to his face that he totally deserved, and the cold shower. A body has a right to get mad at its owner after he pulls that kind of crap on it. Still, it kind of sucks when Charlie finds he can't get his t-shirt on. He can't lift his arms up enough to pull his t-shirt over his head, he can't bend forward enough to duck his head into the neck hole and he fucking can't figure out what to do so he just drops the shirt to the floor and leaves the bathroom.

 

The apartment is dark, but the sky outside the windows says it will be dawn soon. Charlie goes over to the kitchen counter, where the little light above the stove is on. There are three orange bottles of pills on the counter. Mac's pain meds, his, and the stupid anxiety pills. His are the ones that have the tops he can take off with one hand, not all child poofed like Mac's (what does that even mean? Poofing a child?). He pops the tops off, one two, and both times his hands are shaking so much the pills spill out over the counter. Little round ones for anxiety, long white ones for pain. He makes a sandwich, two long with two round in the middle, and swallows the pills dry. Sticks out his tongue because even when his teeth are chattering and his hands are shaking and everything might be shaking too, he hates that chalky taste (not chalk Charlie likes chalk, these taste like bad chalk).

 

He thinks he's going to go lie down on the couch and let his brain float away. That would be the smart thing to do. But he's dumb and he sees the white and red labeled bottle shoved up behind the coffeemaker. Popov. Shit is just clear - it shouldn't burn as much as it does, but it does and he drinks it anyway. Drinks from the plastic bottle for like twenty seconds before he realizes it's not his bottle of vodka and he should use a glass so he does and he kind of likes how the glass is clear and the vodka is clear and he fills the glass up to the rim and slurps because he got too distracted by the clearness.

 

Once he can carry the glass without spilling the vodka on himself, he starts towards the couch. He will drink his glass of clear fire and then he will lay on the couch and sleep, he thinks. Except Charlie's body decides it wants to walk. So he walks. He walks around and he drinks the vodka and he walks around some more and then he's not breathing right again and the glass is empty so he fills it back up and while he's there he sees the little round white and the long white and he makes a sandwich of four and four and he swallows them with the burning clear that's not really burning anymore and he walks and walks because he can't not walk and he can't breathe and another sandwich like an Oreo but all white and another glass and he wonders if his new ritual is white and clear and if that if he only drinks clear and eats white will he fade away into a ghost?

 

He wants to find out and he tries to make a sandwich again but his hands are too shaky and weird and not attached to his arms anymore and he drops them and they go _tinck-tinck-tinck-tinck_ across the counter and he just picks them up and puts them in his mouth but maybe he has more than another sandwich and he doesn't know but his glass is empty so he takes it again and fills it up with more clear but only halfway because the bottle is empty and he starts to drink and walk to the couch again because he needs to lay down and make his head stop going 'Mac hates me Mac hates me Mac hates me' in time with the way the room is spinning, like his thoughts have been doing when he wasn't thinking about new rituals or sandwiches but he trips and he swears the table leg wasn't there but he goes flat smack on the table and then the table goes kind of flat and he's on his face on the other side and then he looks down and there's a bit of clear sticking out of his skin and it's his clear coming out and his red coming out, but not bad. Not bad enough, he thinks that he needs more red to come out to get more clear to come out and cover him and make him a ghost and so he drags the clear out of the wound and across his chest and he thinks about Mac looking down at his chest and seeing the blood and going 'oh' and he thinks how scared he was and then there's red welling up from the line he drew and it's not clear so he drags it down his chest right between the middle and over his belly and still only red so across and up and then there's someone screaming "CHARLIE WHAT THE FUCK" in big loud words at him and he looks up and sees Mac standing there looking down at him and his mouth is big and he's yelling more words but Charlie can't understand them because maybe the clear is in his brain?

 

"Sorry," he says, cause even his clear brain knows he has to say that and Charlie thinks 'Mac looks scared' and then his eyes roll up in his head.

* * *

 

'Sorry,' fucking sorry, is all Charlie will say!? Mac just walked in on Charlie sitting next to the ruins of his kitchen table, and Charlie slicing the shit out of himself with glass and then the mother fucker says sorry and closes his eyes!

 

For a long moment, too long, Mac is sure, he can't move. He can't process that his best friend is laying sprawled against his broken kitchen table bleeding badly and — oh fuck – the two bottles of pills that were Charlie's are empty on the counter??? Next to a bottle of Popov that Mac is sure was mostly full the last time he saw it! That explains the slurring and the closed eyes — FUCK!

 

Mac's body finally realizes it should be moving and he lurches forward dumbly, dropping to his knees and flat out back hands Charlie on the hurt side of his face, wanting make Charlie _feel_  it. To pull him back to the living.

 

"DENNIS!" Mac screams, on the top of his lungs, knowing about the sound proofing but knowing Den has been keeping the door cracked since he came home from the hospital because Dennis was worried about him and Charlie. At least that's why Mac thinks Dennis has been leaving the door cracked open.

 

"Fuckin' wake up, Charlie," Mac says, gripping Charlie's bare shoulder and shaking him roughly.

 

Charlie's eyes screw up tight. "'m goo'," he slurs, and Mac could cry with relief that Charlie's trying to say he's good, but it's so clear he's not good. Charlie's got like, way too many bloody lines along his torso, bleeding all over the place. That's bad, but the pills and booze are worse, Mac thinks, and he moves down to pull Charlie up by his underarms.

 

Charlie's still got his eyes closed and he flaps his arms a bit, like he wants Mac to let go, but he lets Mac drag him over to the kitchen sink. Mac's chest is on fire from the exertion and the fear burning through him. But he can't think about that. He screams Dennis's name a few more times as he manhandles Charlie into turning around and leaning against the sink, using his body weight to hold Charlie against the sink's counter.

 

"What the fu—" Dennis starts, coming out of the bedroom and taking in the broken table and Charlie's disastrous state at one glance, the word dying in his mouth.

 

Mac ignores him for the moment. He has to induce vomiting, the medical term for ‘make the dude puke’. Mac reaches forward and tries to get his hand in Charlie's hanging open mouth – gets a few of his fingers in before Charlie clamps down and bites, hard, harder than Mac would expect for someone that can just pull their teeth out with no effort (why does he have such a strong bite?).

 

Mac yanks his hand back and steps away from Charlie out of reflex. Charlie half turns and slips sideways down the counter, his shoulder sliding along the cabinet until he's on his knees all curled up, arms over his head, trying to be small and protect himself, Mac realizes.

 

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Charlie babbles, the words stringing together in a rush to say them and with his drug and alcohol heavy tongue doing its damnedest to make the words unclear, he says: "I didn't mean t' bite Uncle Jack. I'll be goo' I just don't like it in my mouth but I'll be—" He breaks off and starts sobbing.

 

"Jesus Christ," Dennis says, standing next to Mac as the two of them look down at their friend, horror slowly dawning.

 

Charlie hears Dennis and flinches tighter into a ball and stops making any noise. He's breathing too hard, and he's got his eyes all squeezed shut. Mac's brain wants to fly off the rails at what Charlie just said, what it proves even though Mac pretty much _knew_  it, he didn't like, know it, know it. Charlie always said no, Jack didn't do anything to him, denied it straight out.

 

But there's pills and booze circulating through Charlie and Mac can't freak out at more than one thing. So he doesn't. Instead, he reaches down and pulls Charlie back up.

 

"Open your mouth," Mac snaps at him, angry and confused and too much to think about how threatening he must sound, how confused poor Charlie must be if he's calling Mac Jack. But Mac's hand is bleeding and Charlie needs to puke and Mac is certain the smaller man isn't in the state to do it for himself. His desperation to make sure Charlie doesn't die is killing any compassion he might have otherwise shown. Still, he forces himself to relax a little and say: "Please Charlie. It's Mac. I won't hurt you, but you gotta puke, bud. You've got god knows how many pills in your belly and all that rotgut vodka."

 

Charlie whines wordlessly, eyes still squeezed shut, and shakes his head.

 

"Damn it, Charlie. You'll _die_ ," Mac nearly growls out. He doesn't want to be mad, he really doesn't – Charlie's not in his right mind, but he's so damn scared that Charlie is going to die that his hands are shaking.. "Open your fucking mouth, man. Don't make me open it for you."

 

"Yeah, Charlie," Dennis says, which Mac supposes is Dennis trying to help.

 

Charlie shakes his head. He's crying, Mac realizes.  Desperation makes Mac attempt to force Charlie's jaw open. Charlie screams, and Mac pins him against the sink with his hips again as he digs both hands into the other man's mouth, one to hold his jaw down and open, not caring that Charlie is still screaming and his tongue is squirming against his fingers, Mac just reaches back because Charlie _has to_  puke like _now_.

 

Mac doesn't get his hands away in time, and winds up supporting Charlie's weight against the sink's counter and puking next to him at the same time, hating himself for not being about to keep it together but he's always been a sympathy spewer. Charlie pukes forever, and there's full pills in the bottom of the sink when he finally stops, whimpering and hanging his head low over the sink. Mac runs the water and washes off his hand, letting off the pressure to let Charlie get away from the sink. He folds down to the ground again, a small little ball of misery.

 

"Go bring the car around front," Mac says to Dennis desperately. Mac is sure that Dennis will bitch about blood, he bitched about blood when he was the one that fucking shot Charlie in the head, or worry about what would happen if Charlie puked again while in the Range Rover. He doesn't say anything, though, just looks at Mac with huge eyes and nods.

 

"Can you walk, Charlie?" Mac asks. He doesn't get an answer, but Charlie's eyes are open. He reaches down and once again pulls Charlie up by his armpits. The other man is really losing a concerning amount of blood, Mac is sure some of the cuts will need stitches, but that's not his main concern right now – the booze and drugs will kill him faster than the bleeding, Mac thinks. Charlie sways on his feet, groaning.

 

"Charlie, can you walk?" Mac asks again.

 

Charlie shakes his head. Great. "Okay, I'll pick you up," Mac says, figuring it will be easier (and quicker) to carry Charlie than help him shuffle out to the car. Mac's tried to walk Charlie when the shorter man was this fucked up – it never ended well, usually with the both of them hitting the sidewalk.

 

Sighing, Mac squats down, puts his good shoulder against Charlie's midsection, feels Charlie trembling violently against him, and lifts. He easily can lift more than Charlie's weight, normally, but he's been shot and his body is still kind of mad at him for that.

 

Charlie is calm until he gets to the stairs, then all of a sudden he starts screaming and kicking and swinging wildly. Mac doesn't stop, just holds onto Charlie with both hands to keep him on his shoulder. And then fucking Charlie manages to nail Mac right in the nuts with his leg.

 

Mac's knees buckle on their own, and Charlie slides off his shoulder as he stumbles forward, Charlie hitting the stairs and Mac stumbling down the last two steps to crash face first into the wall there. He bounces off and lands on his ass, everything spinning. For a minute, Mac just sits there, pain flaring up from his balls and shooting from his head. Dazed, he touches where it hurts near his hair line, and his fingers come away red with his blood.

 

"Fuck," he mutters under his (heaving) breath. He turns to look and Charlie is curled up on the stairs, holding his middle and sobbing. Not like, tearing up. Full sobbing.

 

"Aw, shit dude. You okay?" Mac asks, as he struggles to stand up, needing to lean on the wall to do so.

 

Charlie opens his eyes and asks: "Mac?"

 

Mac nods dumbly. "Yeah, buddy?" He asks, in case Charlie can't see so well past the tears leaking out of his eyes.

 

"Don' 'eel so goo'" Charlie slurs at him.

 

"Yeah, bud. I know. We need to go to the hospital. You weren't walking. Can you stand up?"

 

"Oh," Charlie says, and starts to sit up. He overbalances and would fall to the landing, but Mac catches him.

 

"Need me to pick you up again?"

 

"'gain?"

 

Mac sighs. Charlie forgetting things this quickly couldn't be a good sign, he's clearly near black out drunk on top of all those pills. He doesn't say anything, just repeats the move he did before to get Charlie on his shoulder, and stands up. Charlie groans, and, as he's going down the last flight of stairs, starts gagging again, puking down the back of Mac's shirt.

 

Mac very nearly pukes again. Instead, he keeps forcing himself to walk forward. One step, then the other.

 

Dennis is idling right outside the doors. He jumps out of the car and helps get the back door open, helps Mac guide Charlie into the seat. Charlie is so bonelessly fucked up that he almost slides off the seat and onto the floor of the car. Better than out of the car, Mac thinks, and they shut the door and look at each other for a long moment, then Dennis asks: "Are you bleeding?"

 

Mac shrugs and moves around to the other side, he doesn't want to explain it, and gets in the back seat. Charlie is sitting upright, barely, both arms wrapped around his stomach and moaning. He looks small. And sad.

 

"You okay, bro?" Mac asks, and Charlie shakes his head. And then he does something weird, as Dennis is pulling away from the curb towards the hospital: he moves so that he's sitting in Mac's lap, head resting on Mac's chest.

 

"'m s'rry," Charlie mumbles.

 

"It's okay. Just stay awake," Mac says, realizing he sounds like a prayer. He doesn't care. All he cares about is the comfortable weight of Charlie on his lap, solid and real and warm and alive.

 

Sitting like this, he can feel Charlie breathing shallowly, and he doesn't know if that's from pain in his ribs or the drugs. But Charlie's eyes are open and Mac figures awake is good.

 

They're pulling up near the hospital ER when Charlie looks down then back up at Mac and asks: "Where's you' 'ants?"

 

Mac laughs despite everything. He never thought to pull on pants in the chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *DO NOT* induce vomiting if you or someone you know has taken too many pills. Mac is a dumbass. 
> 
> Also, don't drink Popov. Your vodka should not come in plastic, kiddies.
> 
> This has been a PSA from your Americuntie Mab.


	9. Chapter 9

Mac is in the hospital chapel. He didn't know where else to go. He couldn't sit there and watch Charlie any more, not after the doctors told him they were admitting him – by then they had pumped Charlie's stomach, and that was horrible to watch. Charlie was so confused and out of it he was fighting the doctors and nurses and crying all at the same time. They had to restrain him, and eventually sedate him because he was bleeding all over the place and not listening to them.

 

They had to stitch up Mac's head. He wasn't sure how many stitches he got, but no matter the number, he knew Charlie was getting way more and that just made his chest feel stupid tight. A nurse felt bad for him, sitting there barefoot in his boxers with puke and blood on his t-shirt and gave him unclaimed clothes from the lost and found that they were going to donate to a homeless shelter. Mac wasn't sure how you could lose a pair of shoes at the hospital or pants, for that matter, but he decided he didn't want to know if they were really dead people clothing and the nurses was sugar coating where the clothes came from.

 

Dressed and released from the ER, Mac was told that Charlie was being settled into a room. Dennis and Dee were with him. Mac couldn't stand the idea of seeing him drugged out and tied up again. So instead, he went to the chapel to pray for Charlie.

 

Mac was still struggling to embrace both parts of himself – the gay man and the Catholic. But he wasn't there for himself, so it was easy for Mac to let go of his insecurities regarding himself and focus on praying for his friend. God couldn't be mad at Charlie for Mac being gay, and maybe would listen to his prayers? That was what Mac hoped.

 

Suddenly, Dee is sliding into the pew next to him, frowning as Mac got the hint and moved from where he was kneeling to sitting on the bench.

 

"I have to go," Dee says.

 

"What the fuck do I care?" He asks, even though he knows how much she was around after he got shot, and that she came running over tonight to see if Charlie was alright. He just wants to be mad at someone right now.

 

"You don't have to care that I'm going.  You have to get off your ass and go upstairs and sit with Charlie so he doesn't wake up alone and freak the fuck out."

 

"Why, where’s Dennis?" Mac asks.

 

Dee looks at him, then away at the little altar. Mac thinks she's not going to answer him. Which is annoying because Mac didn't have his phone on him to text Dennis. Dennis was with Charlie when Mac left for the chapel. "I have to go bail him out," Dee answers, and Mac frowns, wondering just how long he's been kneeling there praying for his friend if Dennis had time to leave and get arrested.

 

Then he realizes that there's something more important to ask: "What the fuck did he do to get arrested?"

 

Dee sighs and scrubs her hands over her face. "He went to 'talk' to Jack," Dee does air quotes around talk, like Mac wouldn't have figured it out that Dennis didn't just talk with Jack without that help. He waits for more details on Dennis, did he, like, kill Jack (Mac thinks Dee would have said so, but he's not positive) but Dee just shakes her head "I knew that bastard was a fucking pedo. And that he hurt Charlie. But…"

 

Mac sighs. He's not surprised by any of this, either. But it was one thing to suspect something, once he got older and learned about sex and abuse and shit Charlie's behaviors as a little kid through now made a lot more sense. But Charlie always denied it flat out when asked, when Mac pointed out the picture that Jack held up on the news that time with Frank was a picture of Charlie, shadows making it so Mac wasn't sure Charlie even had pants on and Charlie had gotten mad and stormed out, saying he didn't take any pictures like that, so shut up…Mac knew a lot about denial. He lived in it for forty years, but he knew he was shitty at denying it. Charlie was _good_  at denying things ever happened…so good that Mac felt guilty for never quite believing Charlie's denials...but now, now it was kind of clear that Charlie was just really good at lying about Jack.

 

Dennis running off and beating the shit out of Jack wasn't exactly a surprise either, though Mac wished Dennis had told him where he was going so he could have kicked Jack's ass a bit too, healing body or not. He scrubs his left hand over his face (he can't lift his right arm up at all, his chest hurts that bad but the doc that stitched his head up checked him over and pronounced him just sore there, not reinjured). "Damnit, Dennis," he says, because he should say something. So Dee doesn't get mad at think she's being ignored or some shit.

 

"Yeah." She says, sitting there and looking tired herself for a minute, before she looks over at Mac. "Dennis wasn't sure what happened with Charlie – did he do it on purpose?" Mac is kind of glad she doesn't say 'try and kill himself.' He's not sure he could handle it if she did.

 

Fuck was that a loaded question. Mac sighs again and gives a lopsided shrug. "I'm not sure if he was trying to die, but I don't think he'd mind if he did." Which was genuinely his answer. He's pretty sure Charlie didn't mean to almost kill himself, but he was upset too. Maybe Charlie decided it was time to end things? Mac couldn't be sure, and that scared him. It reminded him of how quickly Charlie was ready to douse himself in lighter fluid, smiling and saying 'I hoped you'd say that' to Mac when he meant fake their deaths, not fucking kill themselves.

 

"Yeah," Dee says, getting out of the pew. Mac can't read her face, figure out if she's worried or pissed or neither. "That asshole. I have to go get Dennis. Go upstairs before Charlie freaks out."

 

He's going to be waking up in a hospital bed with the worst hangover of his life, probably still in restraints. Chances are, Charlie will freak out even if Mac is there. He doesn't say as much to Dee, though, who walks out without another word.

 

It takes Mac another five minutes to force himself to move and go see Charlie – it's not that he doesn't want to, it's just that he feels drained and he's not sure he can get through another Charlie freak out (what will happen when he finds out Dennis was arrested for beating up Jack?).  It's hard to watch, and he doesn't know how to help, really, and that just makes him more anxious knowing there's nothing he can do. But he can't leave Charlie to wake up alone. So he goes, surprised to see that the sun is up and out in the sky when he exits the dark chapel, to go find his friend.

 

* * *

 

 It's one in the afternoon when Charlie finally wakes up. Mac was dozing on the chair next to his bed, trying hard to be awake but failing under the weight of sleep deprivation and one hell of an adrenaline crash on top. Oh, and he's still recovering from being fucking shot. Still, he tries to stay awake and he's mad at himself when he hears raw sounding "Mac?" Because he drifted off again and Charlie woke up basically alone.

 

Mac snaps to fully awake so quick he's almost dizzy from it. Thankfully, the doctors had removed the restraints while Charlie slept but there's a red ring around Charlie's right hand all the same. Charlie is looking at him, and Mac can't figure out what the look on the other man's face means. It makes him a bit sad, he can usually read Charlie better than anyone.

 

They sit there in silence, and Mac realizes slowly that Charlie is not going to be the one talk first. So he says: "Hey, man."

 

Charlie squints his open eye at him, like he's trying to figure out what's going on but is afraid to ask. And fuck, Charlie's other eye was opening up from the swelling until Mac hit him there less than twenty-four hours ago (it only felt like a million years ago). His frown only gets worse when Charlie doesn't talk.

 

For once, it's him that can't handle the silence and he asks, lamely: "How you feeling?"

 

Charlie gives a shallow shrug, then winces, his hand going to his chest, and frowning when he touches bandages. "Shitty," he answers after a moment.

 

"No shit, dude," Mac says angrier than he means to. But his mouth goes on without his brain's permission - Mac was never good at keeping that shut against his anger. "You almost fuckin' died, Charlie. They had to pump your stomach and stitch you back together like fucking Humpty Dumpty!"

 

Charlie frowns at him, confused. "I'm not an egg," Charlie argues, and Mac thinks for a moment Charlie is (not surprisingly given it's Charlie) missing the point, but then he says: "I don't remember much," all quiet and guilty sounding.

 

Mac thinks of Charlie curled up on the floor, begging not to have anything put in his mouth and closes his eyes. He doesn't want to tell him about that. Instead, he says: "You drank almost a full bottle of Popov. And ate, like, twenty Percocet and all the anxiety pills. Of course you can't remember much."

 

Charlie gives a quiet 'oh' and doesn't say anything for a long moment. Then he gestures at Mac's face. "I didn't do that, did I?"

 

Mac debates the truth: he wouldn't have fallen if he wasn't carrying Charlie, if the other man hadn't nailed him in the cubes (which still fucking hurt, thanks Charlie!) but Charlie looks small and sad in the hospital bed, terrified to hear that he hurt Mac even though Mac put him against a wall and punched him in the face not even a full twenty-four hours ago. Mac scrubs a hand over his face again and says: "Not really. Lost my balance carrying you down the stairs."

 

Charlie nods. Doesn't say anything else. Mac wonders if he remembers what he said about Jack, but can't get himself to jump into that can of worms. He decides to dance around it by holding up his bandage wrapped hand. "You did bite the shit out of me, though. You are disturbingly good at biting." Mac isn't sure he'll ever get over watching Charlie bite out the neck of a mall Santa. The image has cropped up in his dreams since, especially around Christmas.

 

Charlie looks guilty and his eyebrows scrunch together. Even with however long it's been since That Night (Mac's kinda lost track) Charlie still hasn't managed to remember that doing that hurts. He winces and then lets out a sigh. "Yeah?" He asks, and Charlie is a shit actor, so his confusion is probably real. "Why?"

 

Yeah. Charlie doesn't remember what he said. Which eventually is going to be a Thing, Mac is sure of it, but for right now can just be a good thing. "I was trying to get you to puke," Mac answers.

 

"Oh," Charlie says, quietly. "Thanks, man."

 

"For making you puke?" It seems like a weirdly specific thing to be thanking him for.

 

Charlie nods. "Yeah. You probably saved my life. That's the second time. I know I don't deserve it, after what I told you last night."

 

For a crazy moment, Mac thinks Charlie means the Uncle Jack thing, but realizes Charlie's talking about ratting out Luther. Which Mac hasn't even really thought about in the last twelve hours, given how terrified he was that Charlie was going to die. "Don't be a fucking moron, Charlie. You deserve it," he says, because that's the truth, even if he's mad at the other man, which he's not sure he is. He hasn't really had a chance to think about it.  

 

Charlie looks at him all surprised, but looks away without saying anything. Mac sighs and stays just as quiet. In the long silence that follows, Mac debates the question he wants to ask like a thousand times, but finally just fucking asks it because he has to know the answer. "Did you mean to kill yourself, Charlie?" His voice is so quiet when he asks it that he's surprised Charlie can even hear him, but Charlie gives a whole body flinch at the question, so Mac knows he did.

 

After what feels like an hour, Mac's heart pounding away in his chest the whole time, Charlie answers: "I don't think so."

 

"Jesus Christ, Charlie! Could you sound any less sure about that?" Mac snaps.

 

"What do you want from me?" Charlie shouts right back at him, flinging his arms out to the side, wincing and dropping them down. Mac wonders if he fucked up Charlie's ribs worse, dropping him on the stairs, or if it's the stitches pulling, and he's afraid to ask. Charlie keeps shouting anyway: "I don't know, okay? I just remember being upset and sore because the shower water went cold and I took some pills and drank a bit of vodka and then I guess they didn't help so I took more? I don't know!"

 

"How about the part where you were fucking slicing yourself open?" Mac asks, and yeah they shouldn't be screaming at each other in a hospital room (this one isn't private, there's someone on the other side of the white curtain, closer to the door), but he's so mad at Charlie for not being sure if he was trying to kill himself or not he can't really think about that. Not when he's so scared that Charlie being unsure means that yeah, he did try to kill himself.

 

Charlie frowns at him and looks down at his chest like he can see the bandages through his hospital gown. "I dunno? There was glass coming out of me and I think I thought it was the vodka?" Charlie answers quieter than before. He makes the face he makes when even he gets that he said something stupid or weird and Mac wants to smack him, for some reason.

 

Actually, Mac wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him hard until he understands what he almost did, that he almost fucking died. Until Charlie understands how _scared_  Mac was that his best friend was going to die in front of him for the second time since the night that asshole came looking for Frank. Mac only becomes aware of the tears on his face when Charlie says: "Shit, man. Don't cry."

 

Mac wipes angrily at his eyes and looks down at his lap, rather than at Charlie. Stupid eyes. It must be because he's so tired. He's always been whiny when he's tired. "Fuck you, Charlie," he says, trying to get that anger back because at least anger isn't embarrassing, but he can't. "I thought I was going to watch you die, man. You were bleeding everywhere and slurring your words and the pill bottles were empty." Mac's rambling is interrupted by a loud rattling and Charlie cursing and he looks up to see the other man attempting to lower the railing on the bed. But he's Charlie and he has no idea how to.

 

"Dude. What are you doing?"

 

"Trying to get off this fucking bed!" Charlie shouts at him, but he looks guilty after and sighs laying back down and giving up.

 

"Why?" Mac asks, honestly confused.

 

"'Cause you look like you needed a hug or some shit!" Charlie shouts at him, again throwing his hands up - number one sign of a defensive Charlie, right there (after shouting).

 

"Gentlemen!" A voice says, right as Mac is about to argue that he doesn't need a hug (it's a lie).

 

Mac and Charlie turn to see a nurse come over to their curtained off area. Neither of them say anything, and the woman goes on: "Why are we shouting at each other in a hospital room?"

 

Mac looks at Charlie, and Charlie looks at Mac. They shrug at the same time. The nurse doesn't look amused, but she presses on, so they must look sorry enough. "Okay. I see you're awake, Mr. Kelly. I'll let your doctors know. How are you feeling?"

 

Charlie shrugs again, then winces. "Okay, I guess?"

 

She looks at him like he's lying, but nods. "Pain level?"

 

Charlie looks like he's thinking about lying, but then says; "I dunno. Like, five?"

 

She nods. "I can get you something for the pain, and I'll get your doctor."

 

Charlie looks nervous at that, but he nods. She says, over her shoulder as she goes: "No more yelling!" Which Mac figures is fucked up, considering she's yelling, but whatever.

 

"We good, dude?" Charlie asks all quiet when she's gone.

 

Mac smiles and nods. "Yeah, man. We're good."

 

The smile he gets back is so worth the neck ache he has from sleeping in the chair.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Charlie knows he shouldn't be glad that the mental health care system is a joke, that's what Dennis says over the phone to Mac when Mac calls to ask him to pick them up after Charlie's doctor says he can leave the hospital if he's not going to be alone, but he is kind of happy he can leave the hospital. At this point, Charlie's pretty sure he's never going to go back to his own apartment. But leaving the hospital to go to Mac and Dennis's is better than staying at the hospital and having more conversations about 'motivation' and whether or not he'll hurt himself again. Charlie figures he must have answered those questions okay, if he's not being kept or locked up in like a straitjacket.

 

After that, it's a lot of busy stuff, taking the referral to see a physiatrist and getting more prescriptions filled for him, Mac whistling quietly at the price and promising to keep Charlie's meds in a safe place because clearly the kitchen counter was a bad idea (none of the hospital people say that, but they seem to think it at him, and Charlie can't really argue). There's someone from the hospital talking to Mac about warning signs and things that Charlie tunes out to stare at the wall and float a little even though he knows they're talking about him and he should listen, but Mac's listening and it's fine, it's all good he hates hearing things like 'don't give him access to alcohol' and shit like that, like he's a middle schooler.

 

Finally, finally after what seems like hours after they said he could leave, Dee comes in to the hospital room with clean clothes for Charlie to put on in a plastic bag. "Where's Dennis?" Mac asks right away.

 

Dee frowns and looks at him, then back at Mac. "He can't drive right now." She seems to be trying to tell Mac something with her eyes, but Mac's missing it.

 

"Why not?"

 

"He hurt his hand this morning." Dee's eyes are doing weird things and Mac is looking madder and madder.

 

"Oh, shit," Charlie says, because Mac looks ready to yell and he doesn't want to be kept in the hospital because Mac was yelling again. "What did he do?"

 

"I don't know, Charlie!" Dee shouts, and Charlie frowns and looks down at the blanket covering his lap. He knows they all have a right to be mad at him for causing so much trouble just because he drank too much and maybe took too many pills, but he doesn't like being yelled at!

 

"Don't yell at him, you stupid bitch!" Mac shouts at her and then Dee is throwing the plastic bag with his clothes and his sneakers onto Charlie's lap and shouting that she'll be down in the car.

 

"Goddamn it," Mac hisses under his breath, running his hand through his hair, before he turns to look at Charlie. Mac looks lost and small, which is hard to do for a guy so big, and asks, quietly: "You need help getting dressed?"

 

Charlie's ribs hurt and his face hurts and his skin is all tight from the stitches and the idea of moving enough to get dressed kind of makes him want to lay down and cry. But he doesn't want to bother Mac. He opens to his mouth to say he'll be fine, but Mac just sighs and picks up the bag. "It'll be easier if I help you, bro."

 

Charlie can't argue that. So he lets Mac undo the hospital dress thing, and Charlie gets his first look at what he did to himself, at least, the bandages over the stitches. There seems to be a lot of bandages. He doesn't want to turn around and let Mac see, which is stupid, he knows because Mac saw him after he did it (Charlie can't really remember cutting himself, but he thinks there was something to do with the clear from the vodka? he's not sure) but for some reason, with the white bandages and the hospital lights, Charlie feels like the worst person ever and he'd much rather just lay on the hospital bed and not move, but that's not really an option.

 

"Dude, it's cool, turn around," Mac says, all quiet and not too mad sounding.

 

Charlie sighs and turns around. Mac doesn't even really look at the bandages on him, just helps him get his t-shirt on past his cast and then over his head, not saying a word. Same goes for his pants – more sweat pants, which is fine because he can't really do up a fly with one hand, and he doesn't like asking for help to piss, but still he misses his jeans, they're good bridge denim - Mac helps him step in and pulls them up until Charlie can reach down without bending over and pulls them up the rest of the way. Charlie goes to stuff his feet into his sneakers, but Mac stops him and holds up a pair of socks.

 

"Ah, nah. I'm good," Charlie says, not sure why after everything else, the idea of Mac putting socks on him is what breaks him and he shakes his head, arms crossed over this chest, the cast heavy against his stitches.

 

Mac gives him a strange look, but shrugs. "Fine..." and doesn't comment when Charlie manages to slide his feet into his sneakers without untying them.

 

Ten minutes later, they're in the lobby of the hospital, Charlie trailing slightly after Mac, not sure why his stomach is doing weird things with worry (or maybe it's guilt?), when suddenly he hears his mother saying: "Charlie!" And she pops up out of nowhere.

 

He knows his mother's ways of saying his name, there's like, nine thousand, but he doesn't think he's ever heard this one. But then he can't really think about that because she's squeezing him tight, so tight that all his bruises and stitches scream at him, and Mac is saying "Mrs. Kelly," all funny surprised and Charlie thinks he might white out for a second, because it hurts that much and then his mom is letting him go and for some reason, pushing Mac, both hands on his chest, and of course she must hit where his wound is because Mac goes pale and tries to dodge away from her, hands coming up to protect his chest and Charlie says "Mom, Mom, what the fuck," right as she yells "Did you beat up my Charlie too?" And takes another swing at Mac's chest, but Charlie grabs her arm.

 

"Mom!" He shouts, holding her arm, and she looks at him and bursts into tears, which is so not what he expected. Mac is wide eyed and panicked looking, looking between the two of them.

 

"Oh, Charlie," she says, and then she's hugging him tight again, too tight, and he almost misses what she says over the pain of her arms around him. "Oh Charlie your friend came and beat up Jack! Did they hurt you too, Charlie? You can tell me!"

 

Charlie looks over her head at Mac, and Mac won't look at him. "What?" He asks, though he's not sure he's asking her or Mac. "No, Mom. Mac didn't hurt me..." he trails off for a minute, deciding that hearing that someone looking for Frank beat the shit out of him probably won't make her feel any better, he lies and says: "The bar got robbed. Mac got _shot_  protecting me, Mom." It's close to the truth, but not the whole truth. Best to leave out the part where Frank got involved with shady people and Charlie and Mac paid for it, or the fact that he just nearly ODed and cut the shit out of himself.

 

She lets go of him to glare up at Mac. Mac nods weakly, left hand still pressed over where he got shot. Charlie hopes she didn't fuck something up. Her face goes soft and sad, and she reaches up to touch the bandage covering the stitches on Mac's forehead, and Mac flinches back away from her hand, which, considering she just was hitting him, that seems fair.

 

"Oh, dear. He's beating the both of you, isn't he? He's a maniac and needs to be—"

 

"Mom!" Charlie shouts, to stop her from ranting. When she does and looks at him, he asks: "Who are you talking about?"

 

"Your other friend, Charlie! Dennis!" She says, eyes doing that sad thing that makes him sad too, in the pit of his stomach. She used to give him this look at school meetings, when Charlie was acting too stupid and they wanted to test him and she thought they were being mean to him, but Charlie was being too dumb to see that himself (for the record, no, he always understood he's dumb as shit and that the school hated him for ruining their test scores). Charlie hates that look.

 

"Dennis? Why would Dennis beat us up?" Charlie asks, he's so confused. But when he looks at Mac, Mac has this panicked look on his face and he's looking around the hospital lobby like someone is going to pop out and save him.

 

"Because he beat up Jack this morning! And now Jack is too afraid to press—"

 

"Wait, Mom, stop!" Charlie begs, because she always goes too fast, too hyper and she's not making sense. "Why would Dennis do that?"

 

"I don't know! He just did, Charlie. I always said that Dennis is a bad influence on you and—"

 

Charlie realizes something, right then. Mac doesn't look surprised. He looks worried, but not surprised. She keeps talking about how Dennis needs to be locked up, but Charlie tunes her out, and says, quietly, over her head: "Mac?"

 

Mac swallows hard, and Charlie knows he's right. Mac knows something he's not telling him. "Why did Dennis beat up Uncle Jack?" He asks, again ignoring any answer his mother gives.

 

Mac looks around the lobby and back and Charlie and gives him Pound Puppy eyes again. "Not here, man. Let's go home, and we'll talk."

 

"No!" His mother screams, so loud that everyone in the lobby, who had kind of been looking at them already, turns and stares at them. She grabs his arm, the broken one, up above the cast and holds on tight. "No! My Charlie is not going home with you!" She shouts at Mac.

 

Two security guards are coming over, looking not too happy. Charlie wonders if they're the kind with tasers, then decides he doesn't want to know, and pulls his arm away from his mother, puts his good hand on her shoulder and gets her to look at him, calm her down like he always was able to. "Mom, it's fine. Mac's coming to my place," he lies. He used to lie to her all the time, to get her to calm down and stop worrying about things like if he was going to school or whatever it was she worried about, when he lived with her. He leans in, close to her ear because he can't look her in the eyes as he flat out lies, but he has to sell this before she flips her shit and he watches his mother get tased by hospital rent a cops. "Mac lives with Dennis and he doesn't want to go home, so I gotta go with him so he goes to my place, Ma." Says it quiet, like Mac doesn't want him to say it, like he's let her in on a secret.

 

Charlie hates lying to his mother. But he knows that if he goes upstairs with her to see Jack, he won't find out why Dennis beat him up. And well, there's the part of him that never wants to see his Uncle anyway.  He gives her a pleading look 'Don't make me see him,' Charlie thinks, hopes he can beam the thought into her head. It's her brother and he knows she loves him, but Charlie fucking can barely stand to be around him. Had nearly puked, for some reason, when he found out Frank had invited Jack to join them at the Super Bowl last year... Lawyer shit, he understood why they had to go to Jack. He had no choice in that, the other lawyer was a giant sack of dicks to them, but why for a trip that was supposed to be fun? And oh, right, his brain was going away on random thought trains again - he needed to focus before someone gets tased.

 

His mom is looking at him with big sad eyes, all wet and making him feel guilty it's her brother in a hospital bed, that must suck, but she nods and puts her hands on his face, careful of the bruises. As a rule, Charlie hates when his face is touched, but doesn't mind it so much from her. Not when she's got those wet eyes on him. "Okay, Charlie. I'll call you."

 

And then she walks away, to the elevators like she wasn't just screaming in the lobby of a hospital, and the security guards look at him and Mac like it was their fault things got loud, so Mac grabs his arm and pulls him along out the door. Mrs. Mac is sitting outside, next to a no smoking sign, smoking. Mac walks right past her, so Charlie follows, but there's a grunt that could mean 'hello, son' but might just be because she has to fart or something. Charlie's long since given up trying to understand Mrs. Mac's grunts, though Mac claims he understands her perfectly. He'd probably say it was a hello, but Charlie knows better.

 

Dee is sitting in the Ranger on her cellphone. But she says "Shit, they're in the car. We're coming home," and then hangs up the phone as Mac gets in the front and Charlie climbs in the back. There's dark stains on the back seat, so Charlie tries to avoid them. He's not sure if it's his blood or puke or both.

 

"Why did Dennis beat up my Uncle Jack?" Charlie asks, as Dee starts the car and leaves the hospital parking lot. Dee gives Mac a look as she does so, totally unsafe for a driver and almost smashes into a Prius. Charlie realizes Dee knew already too. What the fuck?

 

Mac doesn't turn around or say anything for a moment, but then he does, holding out two of Charlie's anxiety pills. "Take these. You're gonna need 'em," Mac says. Charlie's pretty sure he's only supposed to take them one at a time and does that mean this is bad, that Mac thinks he needs two? But that doesn't matter because Mac isn't fucking answering him!

 

"Fuck you. Tell me!" Charlie shouts because he was good in the hospital lobby, but his mother was _scared_  and that's not cool. Dennis scared his mom and beat up his uncle.

 

Mac squints his eyes at him, never a fan of being yelled at. Then he sighs and goes back to looking guilty. "Can we wait until we--"

 

"No! Now!"

 

"Goddamn it Charlie, stop yelling!" Dee shouts, but both Mac and Charlie ignore her.

 

"Fine!" Mac screams back at him, but he holds out his fist with the pills again. "Take the fuckin' pills and I'll tell you!"

 

Charlie's stomach is doing weird things, his hands tingling. Mac is never this careful about telling him something – he tends to just blurt out the truth. So maybe he should take the pills? Charlie's not sure he wants to, but there is real fear in Mac's eyes, worry for him, Charlie thinks... So he reaches out and takes them like he’s been told, and swallows them dry. He crosses his arms over his chest, and it hurts because everything hurts, but he glares pointedly at Mac until Mac throws up his hands in frustration.

 

"Fuck, dude! Fine!" But then he doesn't say anything for a long time, but looks like he's trying to make words, which fine, Charlie understands that, but he can't figure out what Mac is scared to tell him. 'Cause Mac does look scared. And Mac never looks like he has to think about his words – he's like Charlie, he just talks.

 

"You said something last night, okay?" Mac says, and he doesn't sound angry or anything like that anymore. He sounds really, really sad and really, really unhappy that he has to tell Charlie this. He won't look Charlie in the eyes, even though Charlie tries to make him. "About, uh, Jack," Mac goes on, then swallows hard and turns around in his seat, pressing his hands to his eyes. His hands are shaking. Charlie feels sick, and he's not sure why. "I don't wanna tell him this, Dee," Mac says, so quietly that Charlie almost doesn't hear it. Dee does, and she actually lets one hand go of the steering wheel to pat Mac on the shoulder.

 

"You have to," she says, all quiet, and gives Charlie a worried look in the review mirror.

 

Charlie's face has gone numb, and he's sure it's not from the pills dissolving in his stomach. Mac really doesn't want to say this, which means it's really bad. "What did I say, Mac?" He asks, voice just as quiet as Dee's.

 

Mac turns around to look at him but then doesn't meet his eyes, looks down at the floor of the Rover. "After you bit me," Mac starts, but stops and looks briefly at Charlie, looks so miserable that Charlie almost says stop, don't say it. Because he's sure. He's positive now, that he doesn't want to know, but he has to know, because Mac wasn't even this careful when he told Charlie that it sounded like his mother was a whore (in hindsight, yeah, that was obvious, but Charlie is really dumb). But. He needs to know.

 

"Uh, I kinda dropped you when you bit me because I jumped away from you and because you couldn't really stand up and you fell down? Do you remember that?" Charlie shakes his head, surprised he has the ability to do it when his whole body feels numb. Mac sighs. "Yeah, of course not," he mumbles then looks at Charlie in the eyes again, and says in a rush: "You were crying and apologizing and you called me 'Uncle Jack' and then – fuck! – you said you didn't like it when he, uh, put 'it' in your mouth."

 

Charlie's ears are hot and buzzing and his lips and hands are tingling and suddenly he knows he's got to get out of the car. He can't breathe there's not enough air and he tries the door handle but it's locked and Mac is reaching for him, and then shouting at Dee to stop he car as Charlie tries and tries to get the door to the car open but he can't work the lock 'cause his fingers are kind of numb and Dee stops in middle of the fucking road and cars are honking but Charlie doesn't care because someone has popped the locks and he stumbles out of the Ranger taking big big breaths that hurt his ribs but don't give him any air and then he's got his hands on his knees and he's vomiting up what little food the hospital had him eat and everything is spinning and the cars are laying on their horns one long noise or maybe that's in his head? He's not sure – and and –

 

"Charlie, fuck, man, breathe!" Mac is shouting, Mac with his hands on Charlie's shoulders and Charlie doesn't want to be touched and he twists away, Mac gives him the sad Pound Puppy eyes and Charlie thinks of knives and stuffing and bends over and dry heaves onto the pavement.

 

"Get out of the fucking road!" Someone is screaming and Charlie turns to scream back at them, but he can't make any words so he just screams wordlessly until little black spots dot his vision (air pressure, he thinks, dazedly) and Mac has both hands on his good arm pulling him hard, out of the road between the parked cars and up on the sidewalk and the honking stops but Charlie's screaming hasn't and Mac won't let go of him this time, not even when Charlie pulls his head back and aims a head butt at Mac's nose but Mac leans back in time so Charlie's forehead only connects roughly with Mac's chin and Mac still curses like it hurt but he doesn't let go and Charlie's stopped screaming, which is good and then he realizes it's because he's sobbing which isn't so good if he's honest and Mac isn't holding onto his arms anymore he's got him wrapped in a hug and that's not so bad because somewhere in Charlie's brain that phrase ('don't put it in my mouth') is repeating over and over and it's making too much sense and it sounds like him when he was little and he knows what he didn't want in his mouth and what he bit to make his uncle cut off the Pound Puppy's head and holy shit he can't breathe and he can't stop shaking and he can feel himself floating away, like he does sometimes, and he guesses if he has to do that there's only one person who he'd want to do be holding onto his body for when he comes back and that's Mac so that's cool and then he just stops thinking things for a long while.


	11. Chapter 11

For once in his life, Mac doesn't give a shit that he's crying in public (hasn't done that since he was a fuckin' kid and a bully tripped him in front of his house and his dad called him a pussy from the front porch) as he and Dee steer Charlie up the stairs and into his and Dennis's apartment. Dennis is pacing in the living room and stops to look at them. He opens his mouth, looks at Mac and then Charlie, Mac with a bloody lip (but thankfully no missing teeth) from Charlie's head-butt and immediately closes his mouth.

 

If Mac wasn't Dennis' roommate, and Charlie's friend forever, this whole blank stare that Charlie's got going on would scare the shit out of him even more than it already does. But he's seen it from Dennis and even Charlie once or twice, so he's not freaking out yet. Not yet. Okay, he's freaking the fuck out but he's not losing his shit too badly. Instead, he guides Charlie by the arm to go sit on the couch and then he's leaving to get the Fireball because he's going to be sick if he doesn't have a fucking shot of something strong soon. Might be sick anyway, he thinks as he pulls from the bottle and then wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeve because really, it's not him that's dealing with some serious childhood trauma, so why is he fucking crying anyway?

 

"What the fuck?" Dennis asks, and Mac looks at him, and notices for the first time the cast on Dennis's right hand, over his fingers.

 

"Charlie's Mom was at the hospital to visit Jack," Mac sneers and takes another drink of the Fireball because fuck saying that bastard's name. "She told him you beat him up." Another drink "And then Charlie wouldn't let it go until I told him why."

 

Dee is sitting next to Charlie on the couch, looking between Dennis and Mac like she's waiting for a fight. Instead, Dennis comes over and takes the Fireball and takes a long swig himself, wincing at the (kind of awful) taste. Mac kind of wants to throw up still and his chest is burning from the cinnamon, (lip too because booze never feels good on cuts, especially cinnamon flavored whiskey) so fuck Fireball. He sits at one of the kitchen chairs around the ruined table, and presses both hands to his eyes, even though it hurts a shit ton to lift his right hand up to do it. Presses so hard he sees dots and maybe starts crying again. God. The look on Charlie's face after Mac told him what he said...

 

"You told him in the car?" Dennis asks, and sounds like that was the dumbest choice Mac could have made today, and Mac drops his hands to yell, but Dee beats him to it.

 

"Fuck you, Dennis! You weren't there! Charlie was screaming about it and wouldn't fucking drop it!" Charlie, right next to her, doesn't even react to her shouting. Fuck. Mac goes back to pressing his hands to his eyes. Easier than looking at Charlie looking so lost.

 

"Shut up—" Dennis starts, but Mac stops him by talking and for once, Dennis stops.

 

"Den. Stop. It's done. He knows and he freaked the fuck out and now I don't know what to do so please don't yell about it. I really can't take that right now." Woah that was a lot more honest than he meant to be. Oh well.

 

"Okay," Dennis says quietly.

 

Mac drops his hands down to look up at Dennis all surprised that he dropped the argument so quickly. He realizes it's only been like, not even twenty-four hours since the last time Dennis surprised him by being kind and wonders if it's still from being shot or the fact that he and Charlie seem to be collectively having one hell of a nervous breakdown.

 

"What do we do?" Mac finds himself asking, because if he asks that, he won't ask Dennis why he's being so _nice_  and he figures that will end with a decidedly not nice Dennis.

 

Dennis shrugs. "Give him time. He'll snap out of it."

 

"What if he gets stuck like that?"

 

Normally, Dennis would be reminding Mac about his sort of minor in psychology right about now. Instead, Dennis shrugs again and says, honestly: "We'll take him to a shrink."

 

"They just let him leave the hospital. The doctor said it was because they had no beds? But he was in a bed!" Something about the city of Philadelphia not having enough public psychiatric beds but Charlie didn't need a bed, he needed someone to look at his fucking head! "But they said since his body was fine, he could go if we took him somewhere outpatient? And they said don't upset him! And now I broke him!" Mac was close to screaming, he could feel it, Dennis could too, Mac was sure from the look the other man was giving him.

 

They also said not let him be around sharp objects unsupervised. Mac stands up to do that, grabbing the knife block on the counter and then realizing he doesn't know where to hide it so he shoves it in the stove. They never cook. Charlie won't look there! But he used glass. So Mac starts grabbing the pint glasses they've stolen from Paddy's over the years and goes to put them in the stove too, and Dennis grabs his wrist with his left hand all awkward 'cause he broke his right hand on Jack Kelly's fucking face.

 

"Why are you putting our kitchenware into the oven?" Dennis asks, all calm.

 

"They said not to let him be around sharp objects unsupervised?" Mac answers, but it sounds like a question because Mac is losing his shit, he knows he is.

 

"Okay, one: nobody's going to leave him alone right now. So he'll be supervised," Dennis says, slowly, but somehow not sounding like he was talking to a child, like he sometimes sounded like when he spoke to Mac when Mac was freaking out. "Two: a pint glass isn't a sharp object."

 

"He cut himself with glass last night, Den!" Mac screams. Doesn't mean to yell at all, but his face is numb and there's a burning line down his throat to his stomach from the Fireball and he can't --

 

"Mac. Breathe, man," Dennis says an echo of what Mac told Charlie less than an hour before.

 

Mac pulls in one big breath but it won't hold and he has to do it like three times before he can really hold it in like Dennis is showing him to. Only after then does he notice Dennis's hand on his shoulder. His broken hand. That Dennis broke on Jack's rat fucking face. And Mac goes from panicked to angry so quick his head spins and he steps away from under Dennis's hand.

 

"Why did you go alone? I would've gone with you! I'd like to kill him!" Mac shouts, maybe because he's upset about Dennis hurting himself and getting arrested, but also because he really wants to punch Jack fucking Kelly himself, but he can't now because you can't rock up to someone in a hospital bed and punch them! "You got hurt!"

 

"I know you would have liked to come with me, Mac," Dennis says and he's still so fucking calm that Mac wants to hit him, but stops himself. "But you had two police detectives here yesterday asking about a guy you killed in self-defense! I didn't think it was smart to bring you along on another assault!" By the end Dennis's voice is raised, not nearly as loud as Mac's was, but close. It's totally justifiable, Dennis's anger, given that he's made a very good point. But Jack hurt Charlie!  

 

"Wait, the cops talked to you, Mac?" Dee asks from the couch. "Why?"

 

Mac turns to look at her, nearly falls over because he spins too quick, considering he's not breathing so well, still. Dennis must see that, because he guides him to sit down in the chair again, pushes on his shoulder like Mac's a chick in one of his sex tapes, and Mac sinks down just like they do. He makes a weird wheezy breathing sound (sounds weak and pathetic) and leans forward to put his head between his knees.

 

From there, he snaps at Dee: "Because I fuckin' killed someone, Dee!" And oh yeah, he still has to work through the idea that he killed someone. How do you confess that one to a priest? I killed someone kind of on accident but I swung a spiked baseball bat as hard as I could because I swear, Father, he had a gun, but I knew how hard I was swinging the bat and that you can't swing a bat at someone's head and expect them to live but again, Father, he was waving a gun around -- Christ if he doesn't go to jail for the rest of his life he's still going to Hell at the end of it and--and he can't get a breath in and his eyes are going spotty.

 

"Shit, man, keep breathing," Dennis says, patting him on the back, then rubbing circles. Two months ago, Mac would've give his right nut for this, and now he just feels sick and sad. "Yeah, Dee. They came by yesterday." Dennis says, like he didn't just have to tell a grown man to sit down and breathe because he's too much of an idiot to do it for himself.

 

"Holy shit! Are they going to arrest you? You were just defending yourself!"

 

"That's what I told him, ya bird." The insult is half assed at best, all of them hear it, Mac thinks, but Dennis presses on. "Well, it was more like friend defense than self-defense, but it counts! Mac was defending Paddy's and Charlie! He'll be fine. Or we'll go to the media."

 

"Okay. Good. We won't let you go to jail, Mac," Dee promises. Which is kind of nice.

 

Mac isn't sure he can talk right then. So he just grunts. He stays there, bent forward and breathing hard for a few more minutes before he sits up, wincing as he does. His fucking chest is killing him and he's not even sure if it's from last night (hitting Charlie like an awful fucking friend, or carrying Charlie to the car) or from breathing too hard just now. He was supposed to be doing some lung exercises, but that sounded dumb, you can't exercise your organs, but maybe the doctor was right?

 

Dennis gives him a look. "You should probably go lay down or something, dude. You've been up all night."

 

Mac looks at Charlie on the couch with that far away stare and shakes his head. "Not a chance." He gets up and goes to sit on the couch next to Charlie. Dee wisely gets up or Mac was going to throw her off the couch, he knows Charlie doesn't like her that close, she knows it too, after that disaster of a seminar. Needing something to do with his hands, to feel like he's actually doing _something_  to help, Mac takes the blanket off the back of the couch and puts it around Charlie's front.

 

Charlie doesn't react.

 

* * *

 

Charlie's brain is thinking about that scroll they found in the heart-shaped lock when they tried to be like, Sherlock Holmes or some shit, and break shit in Mac and Dennis's apartment. He's not sure for a long while why his brain was thinking about that. Then he is and he whines. He was thinking about how Frank turned the key and the thing opened up and there was all the words on the paper in there, like just turning the key lead to that, just like what Mac said he said kind of opened up and lead to things -- and -- shit he didn't want to think, did he?

 

"He's moving around," Dee says, and Charlie's not really in his body all the way yet, because his eyes are open but they're not focused on anything and it is kind of weird and kind of scary but not really because he's done this before.

 

"Stop fuckin' talking about him like he's not here!" Mac snaps at Dee.

 

Charlie smells food. Pizza. His stomach growls. He's sitting on something soft and his body feels all heavy and weird and not really there, or maybe his body is _too there_ and that's why it feels so heavy? Charlie's not sure. He feels more than hears himself groan from deep in his chest because he doesn't want to be awake. He doesn't want to be in his body. He doesn't want to be thinking about keys and mouths and blood and --

 

A hand touches his shoulder and he jerks and twitches under it. "Hey, dude, you with us?" Mac asks.

 

Charlie blinks a few times and then he's looking at Mac, who's still holding his shoulder even though he tried to get away. He's at Mac and Dennis's place. How did he get here? He figures Mac took care of him. He nods, when he remembers Mac asked him a question.

 

Mac smiles at him, that same sad Christmas smile. Opens his mouth to say something, but then frowns, like he doesn't know what to say and closes his mouth. Charlie knows the feeling. He doesn't know what to say either.

 

Everyone is quiet for a moment. Charlie looks around, Dee and Dennis are sat around the living room. They're all looking at him. His chest feels tight and it's not the stitches, though they burn and itch in his skin. Or is that memories? Memories he was sure were just weird dreams. Maybe that's what's making his skin burn and itch.

 

Everyone is looking at him. Waiting. Waiting for him to do or say something but he can't really feel his body so good yet, and he's scared because he's going all these things at the edges of his thoughts, memories and thoughts and shit that threaten to spill over and he doesn't want that, so he asks: "Do I smell pizza?"

 

"Uh, yeah, buddy. You want some?" Dennis asks, and he sounds kind of surprised, but that’s fine. Mac is still gaping at him, so Charlie turns his head and looks at Dennis sitting across from him in the chair.

 

Charlie doesn’t really want any food, but his belly does. So he nods. "Yeah," he answers, and then frowns at how rough and scrapey his voice is. Oh, he screamed a lot.

 

"And some water?" Mac offers and practically leaps off the couch to go to the kitchen before Charlie says yes or no.

 

Charlie would rather a beer. He’s not some weird athlete or house wife. Who drinks _water_? But he doubts they’ll let him. He watches, confused as fuck, as Mac opens the cabinet above the sink, frowns and goes over to the oven and pulls out a stack of pint glasses.

 

Charlie looks at Dennis and starts to ask ‘what the hell’ but Dennis just shakes his head, small smirk raising the corners of his mouth. Right. Don’t ask. Mac comes back with a slice of pizza on a paper plate balanced on top of the water glass and the paper bag that had Charlie’s pills in his other hand. Charlie takes the glass and the pizza when Mac holds it out to him.

 

"I think you puked up your pills, dude. You should take some more. And probably the pain one too? Oh! There's an antibiotic also..." Mac says, digging into the bag. He says it like taking the anxiety pill (pills now?) is a suggestion, but Charlie knows it’s not, not really. Mac will look at him all worried (more worried than he is) if he doesn’t take them, and Charlie really can’t handle that right now. He figures he’s made Mac and the rest of them worry enough about him, made them spend their day in the hospital because he couldn’t handle his booze and pills, so he should just do what he can to make their lives easier.

 

Charlie takes a bite of cold pizza, the cheese is so thick and greasy that it’s hard for him to swallow. Normally, he’d like that - that's the best kind of pizza. He forces the bite down, and takes the offered pills that Mac digs out, and doesn’t even make too much of a face when he knocks it back with water. He doesn’t even say a word when Mac puts the paper bag with the pills on his other side, like Charlie is going to grab them up and start popping them right then and there.

 

He manages half the slice of pizza before he sits it down on the coffee table. He looks at Dennis, sees the cast on Dennis's right hand. "You fucking scared my Mom, dude," Charlie says to him. "Maybe Mrs. Mac too," he adds, because well. Mac is right next to him. If Mac wasn’t ready to vibrate out of his own skin right now -seriously, they should probably pass the anxiety pills around- Mac himself would say that. Since it's Charlie's fault Mac is so keyed up, he figures he owes it to Mac to pretend his mother also gave a shit.

 

Dennis raises an eyebrow at that addition. "Nah. She didn't even come downstairs." Dennis answers, and Dee snorts. "I'm sorry I scared your mother." Dennis sounds like he means it. Charlie nods, apology accepted. Still not cool of him, but he's not really mad at what Dennis did, either?

 

"Did Mrs. Kelly call the cops on you?" Mac asks that, Charlie figured they would have already talked about it, but he guesses him sitting there staring into space was a bit distracting.

 

Dennis nods.

 

"Don't worry. She said he won't press charges." Charlie hears himself say, not surprised that his voice, ruined as it is from a stomach pumping and all the screaming, still manages to crack even more when he says 'he'. But he gets the word out. That's a win, right?

 

"Maybe we shouldn't be talking about this right--" Mac starts to argue, but Charlie waves his hand dismissively, and manages not to wince when it pulls on the stitches in his chest. It hurts. But he doesn't wince.

 

Dennis looks at Mac, not Charlie for a moment, then nods and says: "Yeah. He won't press charges. I told him I knew about his kiddie porn stash and I'd make sure the cops got it."

 

"You knew he had a stash of kiddie porn!?" Mac screams the question so loud that Charlie flinches. Or is it Mac jumping to his feet that makes Charlie flinch? He's not sure. Could even have been Dee shrieking: "What the fuck, Dennis!" from the other chair. Maybe it’s the repeating of the phrase ‘kiddie porn.’ Who knows. He flinches.

 

Dennis gets up too, they're both glaring at each other. Charlie kind of doesn't want to deal with this. Doesn’t want to ever think the phrase 'kiddie porn stash' again. Feels like the half a slice of pizza and four pills he just forced down might come up, if he has to think too long on what would be in that stash. Water isn't thick enough to hold down food, he knew it. Beer’s better at it – it has bubbles to keep the food down. He looks over at Dee, hoping that she'll deal with this, but she's just staring up at Dennis and Mac and doesn't see Charlie looking at her. Typical.

 

"No, dumbass, I didn't know for sure! But a guy like that always has one! I took a guess, and since I'm not in a jail cell right now, we can assume that guess was correct!" Dennis shouts back at Mac and Charlie sits there on the couch and thinks about Polaroids and hears ((' _look Charlie, you don't have to get it developed at a store, no one will see our secret pictures_ ')) and he has to lean forward and put his fist and casted hand against his eyes, pushing hard on his swollen up side. Fucking keys and locks and scrolls, man.

 

"Told you we shouldn't be talking about this," Mac hisses at Dennis, and Charlie feels him sit down next to him, hears Dennis sit down too.

 

"Yeah, Dennis. This is a bad idea," Dee adds in, because of fucking course she does - it’s a chance to gang up on Dennis.

 

"Well when the fuck else--" Dennis starts, building to a yell and Charlie decides he can't deal with that - he just _can't_  deal with Dennis and Dee and Mac all shouting at each other about keeping him calm!

 

Charlie stands up way faster than is probably a good idea. The room goes spinny just for a quick moment, but it's long enough that Mac and Dennis and Dee all stand up too. Now they're all standing around looking at him and that's almost worse than anything they could be doing right now.

 

"I gotta--" Charlie says, to explain why he jumped up, but his voice breaks and he's not sure where he's going. "Bathroom!" He says, too loud, too squeaky, but he gets to the bathroom before anyone can stop him and shuts the door hard to lean against it.

 

Outside the bathroom, he can hear Mac say "We didn't hide the razor blades in there!" all worried and Dennis's dismissive response of: "Kid won't off himself!" and if he was a better friend to Mac, Charlie would call through that he won't kill himself, he just has to take a piss, but he's not moved from the door and he's not a good friend and doesn't have to take a piss.

 

Breathing would be a good thing. He just has to breathe until the pills he took melt in his gut and turn into calm. But the key's been unlocked and the scroll is pulling out. It's like rats. You see one and try to smash it and then the next nearly bites your hand! Charlie can't stop thinking about things. About the Pound Puppy Jack destroyed. About how scared he was that Jack was going to cut off his head or ((' _something more important, you little bastard_ ')) because he bit him and Charlie never bit ever again. Not _there_. He's not even sure he bit the first time as much as it was just too much and big and he couldn't --

 

"Charlie! Charlie what was that thud?" Mac shouting, pounding on the bathroom door.

 

Charlie blinks. Huh. He's on the floor, on his knees. Second time in two days he's on this bathroom floor. Not great.  Charlie starts to respond 'I'm okay' to Mac, but he only gets as far as "I--" before the bathroom door slams into his face as Mac throws it open, apparently realizing Charlie didn't lock it.

 

He's not sure if it's a good thing it's the already bruised side of his face or not. Charlie rocks back and hits the wall, hears Mac swear. Then Mac is kneeling in front of him, again like last night and going: "Shh, you're okay, dude," like Charlie was to Mac last night, which is kind of nice of Mac even if he just bashed Charlie in the face with a door, and saying: "Tip your head back and swallow up your blood" because Charlie's nose is bleeding and Charlie does as he's told even as Dennis and Dee both start shrieking that that's wrong, don't swallow your blood, and he flinches at their voices. Mac closes the door so they're both alone inside, and Charlie's already got his head back - Dennis and Dee don't know what they're talking about.

 

Mac hands him a wad of toilet paper and Charlie presses it under his bleeding nose. Tipping his blood back into his mouth is the way to go because it stops quickly and Charlie looks at Mac with a sad Christmas smile of his own, holding out the wad of bloody toilet paper to Mac so Mac can toss it out in the can next to him, he's about to ask Mac if _he's_  okay when his brain gives him another fucking memory he was happy without, of blood and...things....on wadded up toilet paper stuffed down the back of his pants and oh god.  Charlie tips forward, presses forehead on Mac's shoulder and lets out a sob -- it gets out before he can try and keep it in. He's not sure he could've kept that one behind his teeth.

 

"Aw, dude," Mac says, rubbing his back. "I'm so sorry." Sounds like he means it. Like all of him is sorry to know Charlie.

 

"It's gonna be like this forever." Charlie mumbles into Mac's shoulder. "All the -- " he doesn't want to call them memories -- he _can't_ call them memories, even if he knows they are "--thoughts. I can't make 'em stop."

 

Mac rubs his back. "No. It won't be. You're just getting a bit blindsided by everything right now," Mac says, and it sounds like a promise.. Charlie nods into his shoulder because he wants to believe him.

 

They kneel there. On the other side of the closed door Dennis and Dee are talking quietly, Charlie can’t really hear what they’re saying over the rush in his ears and the maybe tears that are coming out and hiccupping his breath, but they don’t try and come in too which is good. Eventually the tears leak away like they came – quiet and not the big screaming sobs that happen sometimes. Charlie leans back, because leaning over hurts his ribs and his chest and his face and everything. Mac gives him a Christmas smile. Might be a ‘this is your life now, Charlie’ smile.

 

"Dude..." Mac starts and looks down at his lap, looks back up, makes himself look Charlie in the eyes – all a move that tells Charlie Mac thinks he doesn’t want to hear what he’s about to say, but Mac goes on anyway. "Dennis called Frank while you were, uh, out of it. Made him promise to pay for ‘the best fucking shrink in Philly’ ‘cause all this shit is his fault.. Maybe...maybe tomorrow we call around and find one for you?"

 

Charlie’s chest goes tight and it’s like someone pulled the string on his stitches. A shrink would _know._  They’d know and they call him things and give him labels and he hates that, hates being told he’s as weird as he knows he is already. Doesn’t want names and labels and disorders heaped on him.

 

Mac must see his panic. He talks quickly: "I’ll go with you, Charlie. You don’t have to talk and you can leave if you don’t like it and never go back. But it might help."

 

"Not Dee’s shrink, right?" Charlie asks, after a minute, looking down away from Mac’s Pound Puppy eyes. "She was weird as shit about skin."

 

Mac laughs. "Nah. Women doctors are the worst, dude."

 

"Didn’t a woman surgeon save your life?" Charlie asks, which oh fuck he doesn’t want to think about that either, but Mac nods.

 

"Yeah, I guess you’re right. But Dee’s shrink was weird. We’ll find you someone else."

 

Charlie nods, and for a minute they’re quiet. Then he has to ask it or his heart will explode it feels like, the stitches are pulling so tight: "You’ll come with me? Just you?"

 

Mac nods and watery smiles again at him, all sad and trying to be reassuring, like the time in fifth grade that Charlie fell out of a tree and his bone was sticking out of his arm and Mac kept saying ‘you’ll be fine!’ but puking and crying in between his desperate to calm him down smiles. Charlie himself was crying, but not puking. At least not until he poked the bone and then it felt weird and he did puke too.

 

"‘Kay," Charlie agrees, rubbing his uncasted hand over his face.  

 

"Okay," Mac agrees.

 

They’re quiet again for a few minutes. Charlie just tries to breathe and not think of Things but Things keep trying to form and poke into his head. When he starts pulling at his hair to force the Things away before they become full thoughts, Mac tugs at his hand and holds it instead. It's kinda nice. He feels like a little kid again, but brave and not small and scared like the Things want him to feel. He and Mac used to hold hands all the time when things were scary - when they were at Mac's and his parents were yelling, or thunderstorms, or if Charlie had a nightmare at a sleepover. It made him feel brave to know the two of them were united together. Then a prick at school saw one time and told them it was gay and that was the last time Mac ever held his hand (even after nightmares!). It's taken, like, more than twenty years, but it's nice to find out Mac is willing to hold his hand again.

 

"Can we sit here until the pills kick in?" Charlie asks. He doesn’t want to go out there and see Dennis with his hand he broke punching someone he doesn’t want to think about and Dee looking like Charlie’s going to kill them all or himself or like she wants to kill them all or herself.

 

Mac’s smile is more sure, more happy than the ones before - Mac always likes it when there's a thing he can actually _do_. "Yeah, bro. Whatever you need."

 

Charlie tries to smile back at him, but guessing from the look in Mac's eyes, Charlie's face is too numb for making good smiles right now. He looks down at their hands. That's easier to look at. Instead of thinking of Things, Charlie thinks about yesterday, sitting in this bathroom with Mac, of the truth he should have never told.

 

Once he starts thinking about that, he can't stop thinking about that. He asks: "Mac?" When Mac looks at him, his face is so ... eager(?) to help Charlie that Charlie almost starts crying again. Instead, Charlie looks back down at their joined hands. It takes him almost another full minute to ask: "Are you mad at me for yesterday?" And when he does ask it, he sounds like a damn little kid.

 

"What? For getting drunk and--"

 

"No!" Charlie says quickly, because he's not sure Mac will say 'hurting yourself' or 'trying to kill yourself' and Charlie's not really sure either of those phrases work since he wasn't really trying to do either and he doesn't like that the rest of them think that's what happened so he doesn’t want to hear Mac say that out loud. He'd also like it if he could say for sure he _wasn't_  trying to do either of those things. Instead, he presses on, because the question is out there and he has to know because if Mac still hates him, he can't keep sitting on the floor like this holding his hand. It's too nice. "Do you hate me for what I told you about Luther. That I ratted him out to the police."

 

Mac is silent. Charlie can't breathe. The stitches have been pulled tight and wrapped the extra thread around his neck. He shouldn't have asked this. He pulls his knees up to his chest and leans his head on them and pulls his hand away from Mac's so he can wrap his good arm around his head and it hurts like fuck to do that, but he needs to be alone and there is no alone after you almost kill yourself (whether you meant to do it or not!). It doesn't help his breathing any to be curled up like this.

 

"Dude. Dude. Stop. Like, uncurl man. Fuck you're like a stubborn turtle, Charlie," Mac is rambling, rubbing Charlie's arm and trying to get him to sit up, muttering the whole time until Charlie sits up more because he's afraid Mac will hurt himself trying to get Charlie to uncurl than because he wants to.

 

Mac smiles at him when he does, gives a short little relieved laugh. Charlie would hate being laughed at, if it wasn't one of the few laughs he's heard from Mac since well...since that asshole broke into Paddy's and tried to kill Mac. "Shit, dude," Mac says. "You gotta give me a minute to think about how to answer before you freak out!"

 

"Why do you need a minute?" Charlie asks, before he can help himself. Mac's never thought before he spoke before.

 

"Because a lot of shit has happened since you told me that, Charlie! I don't know if I'm mad. But I don't hate you."

 

"Oh," Charlie says, and he's smiling at Mac again because he's relieved Mac doesn't hate him. "You can be mad, man. I deserve it."

 

Mac sighs, and rests his head on the wall behind them, closing his eyes. Charlie mirrors him. Easier to say things not looking at each other, Charlie thinks. "I'm not sure you deserve it, Charlie," Mac says after a while, soft and kind. "I mean, it was a dick move, calling the cops, but..." Mac sighs. "Maybe you're right and I woulda wound up dead. I don't think my dad would have killed me. But..." Mac trails off and shrugs. "I don't think I woulda made it here if you didn't."

 

"I'm sorry," Charlie says, and his fucking eyes are watering again. He swipes at them all angry. This crying has to stop. "I'm sorry," he repeats, voice stronger, when Mac tries to say 'don't be' over him "That you father's such a dick, man. You deserve better than that."

 

Mac very carefully bumps their shoulders together - Charlie knows he's careful when he does it because a typical Mac bump makes him go flying now that Mac has tacked on real muscle and not just fat (okay, Fat Mac would knock Charlie on his ass too, sometimes on accident, but it's not his fault he's small!) and this bump doesn't. "Thanks, man." Mac sounds a little choked up. "I'm sorry I hit you."

 

Charlie waves his hand that's not in a cast. "I kinda deserved it."

 

Mac makes a sound like he doesn't agree, but doesn't fight him on it. They fall into silence again. Charlie's surprised to find that his head is pretty silent too. Not the sort of scary empty of before, but calm...Shit, maybe he should have read the bottle of the anxiety pills and been taking two all this time?

 

"How you feeling? Pills in your system yet?" Mac asks, when Charlie yawns.

 

Charlie nods. "Think so. Kinda really heavy feeling. But not too stoned to sleep."

 

"Cool," Mac says, standing up. He offers a hand down to Charlie.

 

Charlie smiles up at him, but gets up himself. Mac sighs, but doesn't complain. "I can sleep on the couch," Charlie says, as they walk out of the bathroom. Dennis and Dee are sitting on the couch, trying to look like they haven't been listening at the bathroom door, but might have been. Charlie doesn't care. The Gang doesn’t really have secrets. He’s made his peace with that.

 

"No, dude. You'll fall off or your back will hurt or something when you wake up. Just share with--" Mac stops talking suddenly, and gives such a sad, stricken look that makes Charlie almost feel sick because he knows he's caused it, but he can't figure out how. When Mac talks again, he's talking to the floor. "Charlie. Just because I'm gay-- I mean--you're my--I wouldn't touch you or --" Mac is trying to say something, but Charlie's not sure what. Finally Mac closes his eyes and takes a breath before forcing out: "Dude. I would never take advantage of you or something, just 'cause I'm gay. You're safe in my bed."

 

"What the fuck, Mac!?" Charlie shouts up at him, unable to stop himself. Why would Mac think that? Charlie has -- oh shit, he realizes slowly, in the whole year that Dennis was gone, Charlie slept in the spare bed. And he's not really slept over since Dennis got back. Oh shit. "I don't think you're gonna touch me in my sleep, Mac!" Charlie keeps shouting, because Mac McDonald is an idiot sometimes and needs to be shouted at. "I'm afraid I'm gonna have a nightmare and, like, punch your chest, you idiot!" Charlie doesn't say what he's afraid his nightmare will be about - until today, he thought for sure it would've been about the shooting, but now he's not sure.

 

Mac's face is kind of really funny. He looks like the picture of shock. Like he really couldn't have guessed that was Charlie's fear about sleeping next to him. Charlie laughs, and he sounds only slightly as hysterical as he feels after the last few days. Last month…or however long it’s been since they decided to close Paddy's early and that asshole ruined it. "Oh," Mac says, voice small and surprised. Like Mac really thought Charlie didn't trust him and that was why Charlie couldn't sleep since Mac came home from the hospital.

 

"You're a goddamned moron, Mac," Dennis says from the couch.

 

"How was I supposed to know he was having nightmares!?" Mac says, all defensive.

 

"He saw you get shot! Of course he's having fucking nightmares, you idiot!" Dennis yells right back.

 

Mac looks at Charlie, then down at his feet again, and shit he's blushing, doing that head duck thing he does when he doesn't really know what to do with the idea of someone loving him enough to give a shit about him. Charlie sighs. Wants to go and beat the shit out of Luther Fucking McDonald and scream at Mrs. Mac until his air pressure gets so high he passes out. He can’t do either of those things, though.

 

"Yeah, dude. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you to let me sleep on the couch. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you. I don’t mind sharing a bed."

 

"Charlie," Mac says, slowly, "You’re more fucked up than I am right now. You’ve got broken ribs and stitches and—"

 

Mac is working himself up into another anxiety attack (Charlie’s _sure_ he had one when Charlie did his weird floating away thing, he’s not an idiot, he knows Mac doesn’t handle stress well) so Charlie cuts him off: "You were _shot_ , Mac. You nearly died. Of course I’m worried about hurting you. You saved my fucking life!"

 

Mac looks down at him, opening and closing his mouth a few times before giving up and closing it again. The smile he gives is a real one though, not a sad one. His chest puffs up a bit too – it’s not often Mac gets to be a badass, and he totally was, coming out of nowhere and fucking nailing that dude before he shot Charlie or hurt him worse.

 

Dee ruins the moment – maybe for the best because Charlie doesn’t know what to say anyway – but still, stupid bird says: "Put a pillow between you two, Jesus! It’s not that hard to fix."

 

Charlie looks over at her and gives a little ‘oh, duh’ laugh. "Yeah. That could work. I’m gonna crash guys."

 

He wants that to be that. That he can drift into the bedroom and go to sleep while he’s still stoned enough to do it without much pain or Things intruding. Still. He has to say something about today. About their helping him. He can’t imagine it’s easy to pack him in a car after he drifted off. It’s not their usual way to give a shit about each other – maybe the whole sudden act of extreme violence really shook them all up more than they know. Or are willing to admit to each other.

 

So he goes to the door of Mac’s room and then turns around, so he has a quick exit. He looks at Mac and Dennis and Dee, all three of them watching him back. Yeah. Maybe things are changing – have been changing since Dennis left, if he’s honest with himself. So it’s not too hard to say: "Thanks guys…for helping me today," and mean it. He doesn’t mean just his suddenly and painfully revealed trauma and his rather bad reaction to that. He means Dennis and Mac taking him to the hospital, Dee getting them home, all of it.

 

"We got your back, Charlie," Dennis promises.

 

Charlie thinks about Dennis punching Jack in the face so hard he broke his hand, Mac sitting on the floor of the bathroom with him holding his hand, Dee sitting in a hospital room all alone while he and Mac slept on all drugged up and he smiles. "Yeah ya do."

 

The smiles he gets back from them make his stomach all warm in a way the pills in there didn’t. The way a bottle of Popov the night before didn’t. He nods once and goes into the bedroom before he does something stupid like cry again. He does anyway, but at least he does it alone and it’s a kind of happy cry, so that’s an okay cry to have. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End.
> 
> More to come, eventually, in this series. 
> 
> A second thank you to brownwithafrown for her beta!
> 
> Follow me on tumblr: mabergunexpress.tumblr.com


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